


moonlit & misbegotten

by amorremanet



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (adoptive or otherwise), (of Shiro by Sendak), Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Background Keith/Regris, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fae & Fairies, Fae Lance (Voltron), Keith and Shiro are NOT siblings, M/M, Meaning that Shiro has a twin brother Ryou, Mental Health Issues, Mentor Ulaz (Voltron), Miscommunication, Misinformation, Misunderstandings, Past Abuse, Past Allurance/Platonic Allurance, Platonic Sheith, Platonic Uliro, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron) is a Mess, Werewolf Shiro (Voltron), twinganes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-24 11:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: Once upon a time, Zarkon — leader of the Galra pack — destroyed alliances between werewolves and the Fae, thanks to his lust for power, his encouragement of his most bloodthirsty lieutenants, and the dangerous experiments conducted by his wife, the fae alchemist Honerva. Together, they all but ruined the werewolves’ standing in magical communities, calling down human retribution that put many lives in danger.Now, amidst mounting threats to the survival of all magical beings, these allegiances must be renewed.Shiro, a good-hearted but troubled member of the Marmora pack, only attends the summit at Nalquod because popular (and heavily distorted) stories about his heroism have made other magical beings more open to negotiating with werewolves as long as he is present. Lance, an overbearing but well-intentioned royal bastard son of the Summer Court, knows Shiro not as himself, but as the hero of his favorite tales. Although a marriage helped lead to the previous dissolution of werewolf-Fae relations, Fae tradition holds that a similar union will create the strongest bond between the two communities.Which sounds nice in theory, but does very little to help Shiro and Lance with their new betrothed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arvalap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arvalap/gifts).



> Written for Arvalap, in the Shance Support Squad’s 2017 holiday exchange.
> 
> I’m so sorry to only have the first half or so of this story finished by now, and that Shance only have one scene together in the first three chapters of this. All that I have to say for myself is: 1. once again, my love of world-building has gotten the absolute best of me in ways that I should have seen coming, but didn’t; 2. I really didn’t do enough to account for the holidays and IRL stressors while planning out a schedule for writing this, and balancing it with everything else that I’ve been working on; and 3. trying to write the last part of this fic’s outline and just posting that felt squiffy and I didn’t feel like it made any earthly sense without the rest of this.
> 
> That said, I hope to have the rest of the story wrapped up in the next week or so, and until then, I hope that you’ve had a good holiday season and that enjoy this beginning, Arva. ♡

Nalquod, the homestead estate of the Summer Court’s Regent Blaytz, sprawls like no other Faery ruler’s enclave and he prides himself on this. For him, this pocket realm must be more than the palace at its center. If any Fae is to truly call Nalquod, _“home,”_ then the entire demesne must reflect and accommodate the passion at the core of all Faery spirits’ essence.

Courtesy of the protective spellwork that conceals Nalquod from any human interlopers, the Aestival Regent has done his best to cultivate a space where his folk can flourish. On the northern end, one finds hills that give way to the green meadows of the western side and the south’s immaculate gardens, tamed only into what the Regent calls, “creative chaos” and full of plants that non-magical eyes have not seen for generations. As one heads toward the east of Nalquod’s grounds, one passes certain springs that the Summer Court protects from human contamination and the elaborate hedge-maze that the Regent commissioned for the enjoyment of his late werewolf consort, nearly six centuries ago.

All across the grounds, one finds Faery artisans and Summer mages hard at work, as well as the evidence of their creations. In addition, Blaytz has set aside countless gathering rings, some large and some small, and every single one a special place for the Fae and mages under the Summer Court’s protection to convene and dance and do their works. Some of these meeting places, but far from all of them, lie in the collection of groves strewn across Blaytz’s lands, which were first created for the protection of sacred trees. One of the largest rings, toward the western end of the estate, sits out in an open field, surrounded only by the most necessary supplies for younger Fae to practice casting their own spells.

As one of the Regent’s daughters explains to visiting magical diplomats, this relative isolation is an absolute necessity for the training ring. Faery magics can be quite tricky, even for the caster. Far too many younger Fae are tied to their most capricious whims with no sense of nuance, craft, or moderation. For magic that is so deeply tied to feeling as that of the Summer Court, this emotional volatility too easily creates explosive consequences.

In the northeastern corner, one finds the beginnings of a lush forest, safeguarded by all Fae. However, one is not advised to wander too far past the golden shimmer in the air that marks Blaytz’s borders. True, King Alfor of the Spring Court welcomes those who cross into his own section of the forest. One might find similar courtesy from the Autumn Court’s Prince Gyrgan and Queen Trigel of the Winter Court, although they hold claim to smaller areas of forest than their brighter counterparts. But several places within these woods belong only to themselves. Not only can humans come and go within those parts, moving as the trees allow them, but also, those who inhabit those parts consider themselves wild, aligned only to the forest and bound by no rules or traditions but their own. They may have respect enough not to attack fellow magical beings, but there can simply be no guarantees. Not even the slyest and most honey-tongued of Faeries would think to promise such a thing.

Fortunately, there is more than enough to find within the bounds of Nalquod, although not all of it may necessarily be seen. Among the Summer Court, many believe that it is impossible to see all of Nalquod at one time. They say that, from atop the great mound in the furthest northeast corner — the highest point around for miles — one might make out most of Blaytz’s realm on a clear day. Although that rumor is largely an exaggeration, there is nevertheless so much territory and it reaches so far that many of Nalquod’s places can, in fact, escape the view of even the most farsighted Fae and the most keen-eyed Elven archers. Whether they can see all of it or not, no one can deny Nalquod’s beauty.

Of course, as Blaytz’s daughter discloses, these midwinter snows hide some of the color one finds during the warmer months. Regent Blaytz would have preferred to host any negotiations of allegiance during the time of year when his Court holds the most sway and his grounds are in full bloom. However, as mounting threats to magical beings make these discussions a more pressing priority, he gladly welcomes you to Nalquod, as ambassadors of your peoples and as his honored guests. His only regret is that you cannot see the estate in its greatest splendor.

This sounds all well and good for Regent Blaytz, muses a tall, broad-shouldered werewolf who strays from his pack as soon as they finish touring the palace and the grounds. He’s certain that the Summer Court’s Regent must care deeply for his enclave, and he cannot deny the work that Blaytz has put into his territory’s upkeep. Still, the simple fact, in Takashi Shirogane’s mind, is that even Nalquod’s greatest splendor would help with nothing at this conference. True, what Blaytz had his daughter show off looks lovely, even covered in snow — but these talks would be just as difficult at a warmer time, in a more verdant locale.

Slipping through corridors and down staircases, heading for the outside, Shiro can’t imagine that _anything_ can grease the diplomatic wheels between werewolves and the Fae. It was difficult enough for werewolves to get anything positive from the negotiations with the vampire clans, given how they see and have always seen werewolves. Worse, most of Shiro’s fellow lycanthropes had so little interest in cooperating with folk whom they, in their more generous moments, describe as _overgrown, self-important leeches_.

As allies of the Fae first and foremost, the merfolk, sirens, Sihirtians, álfar, and huldra all attempted to keep their doors closed to any werewolf delegates. Rumors that someone bribed the Hellhounds’ chieftains haven’t died down since they first sent an emissary to the Pack of Marmora, Shiro’s pack. Things went somewhat more easily with the Gorgons, the dvergar, and the harpies, as all of them know the sting and the twisting pain of other magical beings’ rejection and derision every bit as much as werewolves do. Yet, sharing such knowledge did little to help the conference with the Frost Giants, who demanded that two warriors prove all werewolves’ worth in honorable combat before any discussion could take place, then attempted to deny the victories that Shiro and Zethrid won based on infractions they did not commit. The fact that Zethrid’s mother is, herself, a Jötunn offered them no assistance; if anything, it gave them even higher standards to meet in order to succeed.

With the sole exception of the Hellhounds, ever resentful of being lumped together with werewolves in so many minds, none of these groups has had the deep-coursing, personal vendetta against werewolves that one finds among most Fae. While they have their opinions of Zarkon’s marriage to Honerva and the effect it’s had on everyone, they didn’t have any of their own nobles taken from them, as the Fae did.

Making any vocal point of this, though — bringing up _any_ of the difficulties that threaten these attempts at bringing magical beings together and, in so doing, strengthening their own abilities to protect themselves — would be even less helpful than a change in scenery. Kolivan, leader of the Marmora, specifically told Shiro this, once word came that the Fae’s chosen representatives requested that Shiro appear as an envoy from the Marmora. He has given Shiro little reprieve from hearing reminder after reminder about how important this summit, how much Shiro’s presence means to so many of the folk with whom they meet to talk alliances and how much more it means to the Fae, and how absolutely crucial it is that Shiro keep any negativity to himself, lest it be taken as an insult.

Keeping any pessimism buttoned up for a few days and nights at Nalquod, Shiro can manage that. But if he’s going to pull it off successfully, then he needs to have some space for himself before the actual negotiations start.

He probably shouldn’t skive off from the full welcoming ceremony in search of that space to breathe and clear his head. After all, it _is_ a Summer Court tradition and part of the magical solidarity initiative means building _mutual_ respect the different species and factions. Getting through the meat of this conference is more important than surviving a party, though. Perhaps skipping like this is impolite. But Shiro stayed for the blessing of guest right, and the mere thought of going to Blaytz’s grand hall for the ceremony feels like there’s an enormous, heavy hand clamping down on Shiro’s throat. Like he can’t breathe, much less present a decent face for werewolves everywhere.

If Shiro’s Mom were still alive, she wouldn’t be too pleased with him. Needs must, unfortunately.

Despite the cold wind biting the back of his neck, Shiro slinks out onto the verandah overlooking the palace’s back-garden. Pale sunlight gleams off the silvery coating on his right hand, the ragged pink curse-scar that runs along his nose and cheeks, and the forelock of his hair that’s stuck in this unnatural shade of white. The fine-crafted luxite fingers twitch as Shiro slumps onto a stone railing, bracing himself on his elbows and forearms.

Sighing, he shakes his head. The Vernal magic powering his arm shouldn’t disagree too terribly with Nalquod’s Summer Court charms. Granted, that was only another one of Ulaz’s theories and he’s a Marmoran werewolf like Shiro, not a Fae. There was never any promise that Ulaz would be right. Even so, Shiro can’t stand it when his prosthetic tries to get a mind of its own — as if losing control over his own body during the full moon wasn’t bad enough.

Choking down a shiver, he shucks off his jacket and removes his boots. Still a bit stiff from the last full, he rolls his shoulders, works out a spot of tension in his lower back. Breathing as deeply as he can manage, Shiro closes his eyes. It takes him a moment to focus like always, but as the wind blows through his hair again, his bones crack. His limbs go rubbery and he topples to his knees. His entire body shudders, each muscle and ligament trembling with the shift. His clothes drop off him as his arms and shoulders shrink. The prosthetic arm adjusts itself with the rest of Shiro’s body. Although the rest of his face changes, his scar only moves from his nose to his snout, kept visible because magic gave it to him. Black fur sprouts from Shiro’s head and his tawny skin, taking the edge off of the cold, but the tuft at the front stays a shock of white.

Another deep breath, and Shiro’s transformation finishes. A large wolf hunkers down where the tall, broad-shouldered human-looking beast just stood, and shakes out of his clothing. He heaves a sigh as relief washes over him. One of the only benefits lycanthropy holds is this: shifting into his full-wolf form removes most of Shiro’s ability to tie himself in knots over whatever troubles him at any given moment. The feelings remain, but they’re simpler, more removed from their causes and easier to deal with.

As Shiro scampers down the staircase toward the garden, he even feels something that could almost pass for happiness.

*** * ***

Prince Lance may not yet be a ruler of anything, but his Father is the Summer Court Regent, his Mother is of noble blood in her own right and one of their Court’s most powerful spell-crafters besides, his older siblings all have titles whether they were conceived with Father’s lawful wife or not, and Lance is, in his own less-than-humble opinion, an absolutely gorgeous specimen. Even dressed up in the stuffy, overly restricting outfit his Father put him in for welcoming the werewolf packs’ diplomatic envoys to Nalquod, Lance has his long legs, his sharp jawline, and his glimmering, earth-brown eyes — and, of course, his killer smile.

With the greeting ceremony and tours completed, though, Lance can access the rest of his best features. Once he’s retired to his own quarters with Hunk, Brùnaidh nobility and one of Lance’s oldest companions, and Allura, the Spring Court’s Princess, Lance ducks behind the modesty screen that his friends always insist he change behind. Not that they don’t appreciate his beauty, or so they’ve assured him countless times, but simply because they don’t always want to see him naked. Which is a funny position for them to hold when they’re stretched out on his bed, flipping through some of Lance’s particularly explicit paperback novels — but Lance loves his friends, so he can put up with these little inconsistencies.

On the other hand, Hunk went to his guest room and changed out of his fancy jacket before he slumped back into Lance’s wall. Allura, meanwhile, traded in her fine, juniberry-pink gown for some far less stifling loungewear before flopping so that her billowing, silvery hair drapes off the foot of the bed. Lance would’ve thought that impatience with him might have temporarily done away with the rule about changing behind the modesty screen, and yet it didn’t. Even so, there are far more important matters that the three of them must discuss.

“I still cannot _believe_ my Father,” Lance grouses, when he finally joins them on the bed. His dark blue sleepwear is soft, but nestling himself against Hunk’s strong, soft arm is infinitely more comfortable. “Look, I get that we need alliances like this if we don’t all want to get kidnapped by hunters and _murdered_. Whatever he thinks about magical solidarity being important, though? Why should we need to host the werewolves? Why do _we_ need to negotiate with them in the first place? It’s _their_ fault that everyone hates them. They should be hosting _us_.”

Without putting down her copy of _Throughout the Cosmos_ , the third book in the _Adventures of Sven Gineikiba_ series, Allura sighs impatiently. “Do you _really_ want to be a werewolf’s guest, Lance? Nyma says that some members of the Galra pack live out in caves, like animals. They think that it brings them closer to the beasts within themselves, as though any _civilized_ folk would want for such a thing. Who could _possibly_ feel happy, being reminded that they are cursed to such a brutish life?”

“I don’t know,” says Hunk. “Some of the vampires are pretty big on acting like monsters? Y’know, the ones who live in graveyards or sewers or things? Eating rats or insects or _corpses_?”

“They are not indicative of how _all_ vampires behave, though. Most of their fellow blood-suckers revile them, too—”

“I am _just saying_ , Princess?” Hunk holds up both hands in mock-surrender, with his fingers stuck in Lance’s copy of _Lusine Garou and the Mystery of Vangen Point_ and marking Hunk’s place. “If we can’t say that _all_ vampires are monsters because of those ones? Then Lance’s Father has a point: why do we act like all werewolves are responsible for what _Zarkon_ did?”

“Uh, because no vampire leaders have ever stolen a Spring Court alchemist, from a noble family, and then corrupted her beyond all recognition?” Lance drawls, dropping his head onto Hunk’s shoulder. His fine bed-dressings rustle under his bare feet and the magically-brightened candlelight dances off their surface. “I mean, fine. Father says that Honerva wasn’t exactly a prize to be won _before_ she married Zarkon, but if he _didn’t_ steal her away, then what else explains them getting together?”

“Perhaps it is simply his _animal magnetism_ ,” Allura says, then snorts as though this is the funniest jest that has ever been shared by anybody. Adjusting herself on the bed, she chuckles. “I’m sorry. Sven made that joke to Akira again, and… _Every time_ , it remains _hilarious_.”

Lance pouts. “You wouldn’t think so if I said it.”

“I would appreciate the humor, darling, _and_ the fact that your sensibilities usually are not quite so _morbid_ as your hero’s can be. Even so, you _must_ admit…” Delicately, playfully, she bats a foot against Lance’s ankle. “You often _lack_ Sven Gineikiba’s impeccable comedic timing.”

That’s certainly one way to describe what Sven Gineikiba has going for him, but probably not what Lance would call it. Grumbling, he leans into Hunk’s side and wrinkles his nose at the cover of Allura’s book. The brightly colored artwork features the impossibly beautiful, consistently noble, tormented but heroic werewolf, Sven Gineikiba, sitting by a fire with his hotheaded, socially inept but unfailingly loyal half-werewolf adopted brother and sometimes lover, Akira. After an intense battle with hunters who’d tried to lay their entire pack to waste, Sven and Akira wound up stranded together in the middle of nowhere. Despite the deep gashes in his side — no longer bleeding, but still angry red, with faint hints of green and purple from the hunters’ poison-laced weapons — Sven remains the very picture of determination and resolve, while Akira looks toward him, wide-eyed and nearly trembling with concern. From the cover, one might think that Sven is reassuring his beloved that everything will be alright.

It’s a bit misleading, actually. Part of Lance cannot believe that King Alfor and Queen Fala’s beloved consort, Allura’s second father, would allow an artist to so deeply misrepresent the story as Coran wrote it. In the book, that scene was so affecting because Sven’s injuries had been too much for his healing factor to handle on their own. Had the hunters not used wolfsbane, they still would have dealt him several near-fatal blows. As he and Akira waited for their pack to find him, Sven _didn’t_ think that he would make it out of this misadventure alive and doubted whether or not he _wanted_ to survive. He needed Akira and the strength of their bond to pull him through. True, that bond had lately been threatened by emotional stress and the machinations of Yurak, the nefarious werewolf who originally turned Sven, but as always, Sven and Akira’s devotion — their deep, abiding love for each other — saved the day.

Nudging at Lance’s leg again, Allura puts the book down. Propping herself up on her elbows, she gives him a smirk that’s so smug, Hunk swears she must have learned it from Lance himself. But Allura doesn’t allow him to distract her. She shakes out her billowing silver hair and arches an eyebrow like she expects Lance to say something.

When he doesn’t, she tells him, “The fact that you have no argument? Makes me think that I’m right, and that you _know_ you don’t have Sven’s comedic timing.”

“Yeah, of course I don’t. Know why? Because if I were ever in that situation, I wouldn’t try to reassure the most important other being in my life with a joke about my own impending death.” Lance huffs, curling one leg up to his chest. After a moment’s thought, he adds, “For one thing, I would be stranded with _two_ beings. But then, I’d put both of your beautiful minds at ease with completely accurate remarks about how gorgeous you are.”

“Contrary to what goes on in Court? Flattery can only get you so far.” Whatever Hunk says, his cheeks are so flushed that he can’t hide them behind his book. Answering Lance’s pursed lips, Hunk nudges their shoulders together. “It’s sweet for you to say that, though.”

“You know what would be _really_ sweet?” Lance tries to drawl, but he gives himself too much room to grin and ends up doing that, instead. “Handing me the new Sven adventure off my bedside table so I can see what happens next.”

Hunk’s shoulders droop and his glimmering eyes go dull. “Use a cantrip. Get it yourself.”

Batting his eyelashes, Lance coos, “ _Pleeeeease_? Because I’m your _favorite_ prince?”

When that doesn’t work either, he groans and tries to reach over Hunk. Grunting, he grabs fruitlessly at the novel until Hunk relents and hands it over. Most of the cover art for _Escape from Tebacratz_ is painted in melancholy shades of violet, blue, and green. The most notable exceptions are, as ever, the violently red blood and Sven’s beautiful tawny skin. There’s more of his skin showing than usual, this time. Stripped naked, battered and bleeding, Sven sits on the floor of a filthy prison cell. Tears glisten in his eyes and the long shadows of three hunters loom over him, each one carrying a different weapon.

As with the four installments and collection of short stories that preceded it, _Escape from Tebacratz_ has been riveting, so far. At its open, Sven headed into the woods in search of some missing young ones from a nearby pack. Reluctant though he is to use his lycanthropic abilities, Sven recognizes that they might expedite his quest. True, Sven still hates being a werewolf, resents Yurak for turning him in the first place and infecting him, and hates feeling doomed to irreparable monstrosity, but the whelps aren’t the only magical beings who’ve disappeared, of late. If using his heightened senses and his enhanced abilities can save other people, then Sven cares more for that than his own comfort. Ever-selfless, he cannot ignore the anguish or suffering of other magical beings, even if trying to rescue them means risking his own life.

Unfortunately, he throws himself too much into the search that he doesn’t notice the hunters on his tail until it’s too late. After getting knocked out in an ambush, Sven finds himself locked up in an extensive underground prison complex. Worse yet, when Father called Lance down to greet the visiting delegates, Sven had just learned that his beloved uncle/mentor is leading the cabal of mundanes holding him as their prisoner. It took every glamour charm Lance had at his disposal to conceal how that revelation had brought him to tears. Now that he’s free to keep reading, Lance _needs_ to know what happens next.

“I still don’t get what’s supposed to be so great about Sven Gineikiba,” Hunk says, digging back into his own book. “The real stories can’t have been anything like that. At least Matt imagines the stories in his books all on his own. Takes more work and skill to do that, if you ask me.”

“Matt would still think that he’s a mundane if the Autumn Court hadn’t noticed his magical abilities,” Lance counters. “Sure, he can spin a good yarn, but they brought him in too late. He doesn’t really understand the importance of work like Coran’s to magical cultures. Like when he keeps writing down our oral histories, who does that?”

“Plenty of mages before him, which is why your Father’s library isn’t completely empty,” Hunk points out with a tone that dares Lance to argue with him. He always breaks out a voice like this when he knows that he’s right. “And we wouldn’t have books like _Sven Gineikiba_ at all without magical humans whose powers manifested late.”

“I’m not saying Matt’s wrong or that his work isn’t _valuable_. I’m only saying that he _doesn’t understand_.”

Then again, if the Autumn Court had taken note of Matthew Holt’s potential and replaced him with a Changeling child earlier, maybe he _would_ grasp more of these concepts without any trouble. The Summer Court took his younger sister, Pidge nee Katie, straight from her cradle, and she’s adapted to the magical life perfectly. According to reconnaissance work she did once out of curiosity, her Changeling replacement has done alright for herself as well. Not-Pidge is even going into outer space or something else that mundanes inexplicably find more interesting than the magic all around them.

Either way, Hunk remains unimpressed. “Well, all I’m saying is that you’re setting yourself up for disappointment,” he explains. “The real-life Sven Gineikiba cannot possibly have done most of the stuff that Coran says he did. If you think about it, Lance? These novels are probably more fantasy than a retelling of actual events.”

“Well, of _course_ Coran embellishes somewhat more than folk traditionally do. He _needs_ to do that.” In exasperation that Lance can almost grab out of the air, Allura flops onto the bed and drapes her hair over the edge. “Father won’t _allow_ him to tell the stories _exactly_ as they happened, lest it damage our relations with the werewolves further. And he can only write from the reports he has, which are _far_ from completely accurate. He didn’t even know Sven’s real name while writing the first one.”

“Oh, _Rise of the Champion_ ,” Lance sighs fondly. “Who could’ve known that such a modest effort would give readers one of the greatest heroes we have ever known?”

“You’re just saying that because you want him to throw you down on the nearest flat surface and make the beast with two backs,” snarks Hunk, poking Lance in the side with his elbow.

“Excuse you!” Lance sniffs. “Sven Gineikiba would _ravish_ me like a proper _werewolf_. He would never degrade me like a _beast_.”

“You may be surprised,” Allura teases. “Both by the end of the latest book _and_ by the real Sven, should you ever meet him.”

Rolling his eyes, Lance wilts even further into Hunk. “Oh, that’s _cruel_ , Princess. How can you dangle something like that over my head when you _know_ that I’m never going to meet him?” Lance rubs his cheek on Hunk until Hunk relents and gently pets his hair. But Allura still needs a piece of Lance’s mind, and so he tells her, “There’s a difference between fantasy and reality—”

Allura silences Lance’s voice with a snap of her fingers and the pink shimmer in the air that always accompanies her magic. Looking him in the eye, she says, “Meeting the real Sven Gineikiba could easily become reality for you, darling. He’s attending your Father’s summit.”


	2. Chapter 2

Fortunately for Shiro, no one comes to bother him while he paces through the palace garden. They leave him alone for long enough that he loses track of time, then loses sight of the sun, and finally, curls up underneath an old hawthorn tree to sleep. It isn’t the one that he sleeps by, back at the pack’s homestead, but in lieu of the tree that Shiro likes best, this one does just fine.

Dimly, he knows that not going back inside will probably land him in hot water with someone. Ulaz worries about Shiro when he does things like this, worries whether or not the tinctures and potions they’re trying out are actually approximating Shiro’s old antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, worries whether these attempted remedies are working for him well enough. Keith tries to act like he isn’t fretting because he feels like fretting too openly will put Shiro on-edge, which makes him feel even worse because Keith has enough difficulty to deal with already and shouldn’t need to censor himself with Shiro like that. Kolivan does even more than his adopted son to repress any sign of personal concern for Shiro, instead speaking about how the strength of the pack depends on its individuals and how Shiro’s patterns of self-isolating behavior can put everyone at risk.

It’s a fair point, Shiro realizes this. By that same token, he needs actual, decent rest before going into the negotiations. Not getting it puts everyone at more risk than whether or not he’s feeling his feelings and openly sharing them with others. Since he rests better while in full wolf-form and he doesn’t know if the palace’s guest rooms will let him transform, sleeping in the garden makes perfect sense. The biggest of Shiro’s usual risks doesn’t apply here, either, with all the protective spells that Regent Blaytz has in place around his estate.

The theory holds true, besides. Not only does Shiro sleep straight through the night, he also doesn’t rouse until he hears someone calling—

“Shiro!”

_Keith!_ — Shiro’s ears perk up immediately. He’s on all-fours in seconds, agitatedly shaking off the snow in his fur and the lingering remnants of sleep. Yawning deeply, he works a crick out of his back. He pauses to listen when Keith shouts again, then slinks off, following that sound and the traces he picks up of Keith’s scent. Far less fortunately, though—

“Shiiiiiroooo—”

That second voice makes Shiro growl involuntarily. In turn, that reaction makes him grumble and whine as he sticks his snout into some snow. Because it isn’t fair of him to act that way, it really isn’t. Shiro has nothing against Regris. They’re packmates, he’s good enough folk, and Regris treats Shiro’s best friend right. But Keith could’ve come to find Shiro by himself. He could’ve left his boyfriend behind with Kolivan and Antok, with Thace and Ulaz. Bringing Regris could mean a lot of things and Shiro doesn’t particularly like most of them. Kolivan could be doubting their relative safety at Nalquod, or everything after the welcoming ceremony could’ve gone badly. Perhaps Keith simply didn’t want to search for Shiro on his own. He could’ve been nervous about what he might find.

Whichever explanation is most accurate, Shiro skulks through the snowed-over arrangements of plants. He weaves around a marble statue of Regent Blaytz’s late werewolf consort. He catches sight of something in his peripheral vision, and spends a moment chasing his own tail before he recognizes what he’s up to. All that shakes him out of that reverie is Keith calling for him, voice getting increasingly tight as he does. God, he’s anxious. He won’t want to admit to it, but it’s horribly obvious. With a huff, Shiro trots in Keith’s direction with renewed purpose.

When he catches up to Keith, revealing himself without fanfare would be the easiest of Shiro’s options. It would probably do the most to put Keith’s mind at ease. But looking at his perpetually unruly black mop-top fills Shiro with an _impulse_. Two of them, if he’s honest. But the first is just the desire to be with his pack — something that Keith has been to him since long before he knew that his Mom wasn’t a normal human and long before Shiro ever got turned — which he wants because everything feels so much _better_ when you’re with your pack.

The second notion, though, is something much more mischievous. As far as ideas that come from the irrepressible wolf-side of his mind, though, Shiro could do a lot worse than this. And if nothing else, he might enjoy it. If he’s lucky, he might even get a few minutes of almost-cheer.

Instead of showing himself, Shiro lurks behind a hedge. They have superhuman senses in their humanoid shapes, but there’s no telling if Keith’s tapped into his right now or not. He might be too distracted, given that he doesn’t seem to notice Shiro rustling around behind him. As Keith walks past the hedge, Shiro darts toward him. Yipping, he pounces, knocking both of them back into a snowbank with a soft _thud!_ and a startled, squawking noise from Keith. He squirms and flails his legs as Shiro peers down at him, paws pinning Keith’s shoulders to the ground.

If not for the wide-eyed, tight-lipped way that Keith looks up at him, Shiro could feasibly stay here all day. On the receiving end of that face, Shiro lets out a muted whine. He lowers himself to Keith’s chest, hesitating for a moment so he can lick Keith’s cheek.

Keith groans, but scratches the fur on the back of Shiro’s neck. “You’re not out of trouble for getting me worried.”

Shiro groans, idly pawing at Keith’s jaw. Not rolling his eyes takes massive effort, and Keith arches an eyebrow like he knows Shiro was thinking of doing that. In all likelihood, he does. Maybe Keith can’t read _most_ people terribly well, not without relying on his enhanced senses and the signs that remain open to interpretation — listening for a spike in someone’s heart-rate, smelling the loneliness or fear or lust on them, and so on. Shiro, however, might as well be a giant, flashing neon sign for him.

Huffing gently, Keith ruffles at the scruff of Shiro’s neck. “Regris has your clothes—” The sigh Shiro heaves makes Keith flick him in the ear. “Zarkon, Hagnerva, and Sendak are here. Suck it up and use the buddy system if you want to sleep outside. Or just _ask someone_ if you can shift inside the guest apartments.”

Shiro picks himself up enough to give Keith a pointed, skeptical stare.

All it earns him is an unruffled shrug before Keith explains, “Vampires see us as super-nutritious, fast-replenishing, _barely_ sentient blood-bags. But they worked something out for you at _their_ summit. So, why wouldn’t Blaytz? He doesn’t even hate us for being werewolves. He’s tried to push for folk _not_ to write us off so easily, just because of jack-offs like the Galra pack. Y’know, seeing us as _unique_? Not as monsters? _Not_ judging all of us by guys like Zarkon and Sendak, the way you keep _saying_ that you want?”

Plenty of reasons why Blaytz wouldn’t accommodate Shiro about this come to mind as he sinks back onto Keith’s chest. For one thing, the vampiric clan leaders largely see Shiro as the Champion that most of the pro-magical solidarity propaganda tries to make of him. The ones who didn’t see him as a living legend — an unrealistically capable, self-sacrificing hero, bringer of hope and saver of all supernatural beings, regardless of who they are and whether they like him or not — saw him as a living _weapon_. If they didn’t fear him, they wanted to use him.

For another thing, Shiro _isn’t_ special. True, Blaytz doesn’t hate werewolves, but he has no reason to give Shiro any special treatment either because Shiro _isn’t_ the Champion, and he _isn’t_ the Hope-Bringer, and (thankfully) he _definitely_ isn’t Sven Gineikiba. Before everything that happened with Commander Iverson at the hunter compound, he used to say that Shiro _deserved_ to have his needs recognized. He _deserved_ to have a life where people didn’t ask to buy his Xanax off of him for recreational use, or treat him like garbage when a panic attack derailed his day or one of his downswings made him need more support than usual. Shiro _deserved_ , in Iverson’s estimations, to receive any help he needs to flourish because he shouldn’t be punished for his trauma or how his brain works — but also in the world as it is, Shiro couldn’t _expect_ that kind of decency from anybody. He’d need to steel himself and be ready for resistance, if not outright rejection.

It’s disheartening, sure. At the moment, it’s inconvenient and concerning the people who care about the Shiro. But the principle of, _“Having valid needs doesn’t mean that other people in the world will acknowledge or accommodate them as they should”_ did not stop being true because Shiro’s old mentor turned out to be a werewolf-hating hunter. Facts of life don’t change because Shiro heard them from the person who, before Ulaz came along, had most been like a parent to Shiro since he and Ryou lost all of their blood-family, save each other. Reality will not adjust itself for Shiro just because Iverson, once his surrogate father, now sees his former protege as little more than an animal.

Despite knowing better than to leave Keith without a real answer, especially when he’s already gotten worried today, Shiro only manages a sigh. In response, Keith doesn’t hesitate; he wraps his arms around Shiro and noses at Shiro’s cheek. Not a moment of this and Shiro melts against him, slumps into the warm embrace. Close contact with another member of their pack would be enough to ease Shiro’s mind, even with Thace having no sense of how to relax and how often Kolivan radiates a sense of, _“I am not mad, I’m disappointed.”_

But with Keith holding onto him, Shiro feels safer. He notices the rustle behind them, but rather than snapping to attention, Shiro waits long enough to catch Regris’s scent. When Shiro’s finally breathing a bit easier, Keith rubs his back. He asks if Shiro feels up to shifting back or not.

Nodding, Shiro rolls off of Keith. While Keith shoves himself up and turns Regris around, Shiro shakes the snow out of his coat. The shift back comes with fewer cracks and tremors than he had last night. Shiro shudders as his fur sheds off of him, leaving a wiry, black heap around his knees. With a sigh, he musses his hands over his own hair, trying to rid himself any remaining fur, and shivers from the magical chill of his prosthetic on his skull. When he stands to get his clothes and boots, Keith has them in his arms.

He doesn’t blush, but respectfully, Keith keeps his eyes closed while Shiro’s dressing. Most of their other packmates — most other werewolves in general, at that — don’t mind nudity like this. But it’s bad enough that Ulaz has to examine the scars all over Shiro’s naked body, whenever he patches Shiro up after a rescue mission, a misadventure, or a full that went particularly badly, like the supermoon a few nights ago. Shifting to his human-passing shape makes those wounds visible again, both old and new. The latter ones currently present the biggest potential problem.

Seeing Shiro’s new scars would make Keith worry, which would put him on-edge, which could too easily throw him off during the summit. “Champion” is an unofficial title, one that’s been forced on Shiro when he hasn’t earned it. But Keith is the adopted son of the Marmora’s leader and his late mother was Thace’s sister. For all he doesn’t flaunt a princely title like Lotor does, any missteps on Keith’s part could have further-reaching consequences than any of Shiro’s.

“Strictly speaking? Missteps on _Lotor’s_ part would wreak more havoc on negotiations than anything from either of you,” says Regris, once they’re headed back to the palace, agitatedly swishing out his black ponytail. Not agitated with Shiro’s ideas about how Keith needs to control his temper, but with the entire situation. “The Fae are far more likely to interpret _his_ misdeeds as a deliberate refusal to abide by their codes of conduct—”

“Because it _would_ be, with Lotor.” Keith grimaces, kicking at some snow. “Smart money says that he tries to ruin negotiations just to piss off his Father. _Maybe_ because he doesn’t think Zarkon’s doing enough when it’s _his_ fault we’re even in this mess. But mostly to annoy the old jackass, as if the rest of us don’t suffer when he does that, too.”

“I’d be more worried about _Sendak_ ruining things for everybody.”

Trudging past the tree he slept under, Shiro shoves his hands into his pockets. As they near the verandah, Keith and Regris are so pointedly, nerve-gratingly silent that Shiro can’t take it anymore. If they’re going to accuse him of anything, they could respect him enough to do so openly.

Which they won’t, at least not today. Dimly, Shiro supposes that he can’t blame them for holding back when accusations could put him even more on-edge. _Not_ hearing their complaints has the same effect, though, so he adds, “That _isn’t_ just my personal bias talking, alright? If Zarkon and Honerva don’t keep Sendak leashed for the next few days, he might try to make off with one of Blaytz’s children. Knowing him, he’ll try to _eat_ them because he wants to know what Fae taste like. As if the rest of us don’t have _enough_ problems, thanks to him.”

Keith and Regris trade skeptical looks, and Shiro grumbles. His shoulders hunch until he might as well be slouching, but it does nothing to make him feel any safer. Great, now his best friend and Keith’s boyfriend might think that he’s some kind of danger to himself.

Or they might not, but they probably aren’t feeling too confident in Shiro’s emotional stability, based on the faces that they’re making at each other. Whatever they’re thinking about his state of mind, they probably aren’t wrong. Not necessarily _right_ , either, but they might not be entirely wrong, especially not Keith. Being here in the first place is nerve-wracking. The threat of spending several sessions in the Garnet Drawing Room, sharing with Sendak their spots around the table, magically hewn from the great, still-living elder tree in the chamber’s center, with the myriad gemstones woven into the wood? Certainly has Shiro’s guard up more than usual.

He means to get clarification from his packmates and, if necessary, defend himself. But as they reach the stairway back to the palace, someone above them clears their throat.

Curling his good hand around the freezing, stone banister, Shiro bites back a sigh and stares up at Ulaz, with his spindly limbs and shoulders that seem a hair too broad for the rest of him. Brow furrowed and lips pursed, he taps his long fingers against his high, light brown cheek. If he would turn that expression on Keith and Regris, it wouldn’t make Shiro’s heart sink hard enough to pull all of him down into a slouch.

Except they’ve done nothing terribly worrisome in the past twenty-four hours, while Shiro surely has. Moreover, Ulaz cares about them, but not with the same protective intensity that he gives Shiro. It’s probably only fitting, in Ulaz’s mind, that he should fix his gaze on Shiro, as he slogs up to the verandah behind Keith and Regris.

Likewise, he must see it as a duty for him to lead Shiro back to the guest chambers that he, Keith, and Regris are meant to share, as though he can’t clean up and dress himself for the negotiations on his own. Ulaz says nothing as he helps himself to a seat on the too-soft, overly large bed, but that silence grates on Shiro’s nerves. It makes washing up in the self-replenishing basin feel like he’s doing something wrong. When Ulaz rescued Shiro from his maker and got him to one of the Marmora’s sanctuaries, it established a bond between them, both emotionally and on the deeper, unspeakable lupine level. Dragging the wet cloth over his arms and torso, Shiro agrees with his wolf-side for once: there is something afoot and Ulaz doesn’t want to wait.

Then again, this extra care from Ulaz _might_ be the wolf-side’s fault in the first place. During the supermoon a few nights ago, it fought Shiro harder than normal for control over their body. It makes no sense, how slipping into full-wolf form can work as an escape for Shiro while a full moon’s light turns that side of him into the monster that Sendak always talked about. Regardless, none of Ulaz’s tinctures to ease the process can repress the wolf entirely. Trying to hold it back left Shiro with enough of a self-inflicted mess that he didn’t grasp how bad it was until partway through the second hour of lying prone on Ulaz’s workbench.

The only other time putting Shiro back together took so long was right after Ulaz helped him from escape Sendak. Sure, Ulaz can do quicker work than human doctors, but he needs to check in on how Shiro’s healing. He said that he might need to keep tabs on them until the next full moon, depending on how the maintenance of them goes.

True, there’s the more pressing problem of where Shiro slept last night, but knowing Ulaz, he might have a mind to address multiple issues. In case Ulaz _does_ mean to do upkeep on his scars, Shiro sulks over to the bed before he’s finished dressing. He sits at Ulaz’s side and folds his hands in his lap, baring his neck. Ulaz gives him a pensive _“hmm,”_ tracing his warm, bony fingers along the newer stitch-work.

Uncapping a bottle of one of his mending aids, Ulaz says, “If I told you that the guest chambers do not prevent you from shifting, would you willingly sleep in here? Or would you sneak outside again?”

Shiro shrugs, and cringes as Ulaz smears the cold, slimy paste along his back. “There’s no reason for me _not_ to sleep in here,” he supposes. “The vaulted ceilings are a bit much, the decor is suffocatingly cluttered, and I can’t believe _anybody_ needs this much ostentation. But it’s better than letting Sendak get alone time with me.”

Humming noncommittally, Ulaz massages the longest scar. “I thought, perhaps, that you did not appreciate sharing accommodations with two packmates who are romantically entangled with each other.”

“It’s fine. Keith and Regris aren’t married, so Regent Blaytz couldn’t have known how to put them up best.”

“Which implies that your current arrangement is _not_ the best, in your opinion. And, perhaps, that you do _not_ feel as comfortable as—”

“Who _ever_ feels comfortable with being their best friend’s third-wheel?”

As soon as he bites it out, Shiro blenches. He groans as Ulaz’s hands still on his shoulders, and God, he’s so glad that there’s no looking-glass or reflective surface on the wall. At the moment, Shiro can’t handle the downcast, disappointed expression that Ulaz is surely making at him. He deserves it, but he doesn’t want to see it.

“I just mean to say,” he starts, only to flinch at a new round of paste oozing onto a scar at the small of his back. As Ulaz gently works that spot over, Shiro huffs. “I am not _in love_ with Keith, or sitting here and hopelessly pining over him, or whatever your husband thinks—”

“Thace _does_ still wish that Keith would choose you over Regris,” says Ulaz. “However, he also understands that his nephew’s romantic outings are not his affairs to meddle in—”

“ _Good_ , because we don’t love each other that way, and we don’t need Thace pulling any stunts to try and change that.” Shiro blows at his white forelock, dangling too far down his forehead for his liking. Defiant as ever, it flops down over his eye instead. “It’s bad enough that the _Sven Gineikiba_ books turned us into lovers in the first place. It’s _worse_ that Smythe or whatever the writer’s name is? Made up love triangles between us and Sendak, then Ryou, then Lotor, then Regris, and last I heard from Zethrid? He’s moved on to include _you_ now, too. The fact that folk _outside_ of the pack and Lotor’s gang take those stories for granted _should_ be the worst part of this nonsense—”

“Thace does not get his ideas about the status of your and Keith’s relationship from those tawdry _romans à clef_. He comes from a tradition of thinking that makes it difficult for him to see your steadfast devotion to each other as anything _but_ romantic.” With that said, though, Ulaz concedes, “Though I do not imagine that this nuance is terribly comforting for you. _Or_ that it is helping my case about how you need to _sleep in here_.”

“Sendak being around is a good enough case about that. I won’t sleep outside until we’re back home.”

Having Ulaz rub his shoulders should be soothing in the same way as having Keith scratch the back of his neck in full-wolf form. Yet, Shiro’s sigh feels like he’s dragging it up from his bone marrow. Glancing at the windows and their gilded borders, how they’re taller than Ulaz and still don’t hit the ceiling, Shiro can’t shake off a frozen, heavy feeling in the pit of his chest.

“I’m _happy_ for Keith and Regris,” he says while Ulaz caps up his bottle, dries the excess paste remaining on Shiro’s skin, and lays down a few new bandages. “They’re good together, and I appreciate that Regris makes someone I love so happy.” He drags his hand through his hair, trying to tame the white fringe back into its proper place. “But that doesn’t make it any less of a poisoned bullet to the heart, y’know? Watching them enjoy each other when I’m—”

Shiro barely cuts himself off from saying, _“When I’m broken, and a monster, and I’m probably going to die alone.”_ Even though he chokes it down, Ulaz taps a nail at his shoulder-blade like he can tell exactly what Shiro’s thinking. He probably _can_ , too, for all he might not get the sentiment down verbatim.

Shaking his head, Shiro clarifies, “I only mean that I almost envy Sven Gineikiba’s love life. Even the parts that made me vomit. Unrealistic and periodically disgusting as it is, at least Sven Gineikiba _has_ a love life.”

Gingerly, Ulaz squeezes Shiro’s bicep. “Remember,” he says, “the fact that you are romantically unattached does not mean you are alone. And being a werewolf…?”

“Does not mean that I’m a monster, or relegate me to a life of pain or permanent misery,” Shiro answers, following the prompt, reciting one of the affirmations that Ulaz insists will help or make him feel better someday, if Shiro keeps repeating them for himself.

So far, all they’ve made Shiro feel is guilty for thinking they sound ridiculous when applied to him. Maybe these ideas work for other people, but something about them feels _wrong_ , when Shiro tries to say them about himself. Ulaz is putting in the effort, though, and he insistently believes in Shiro. Playing along is the least that Shiro can do for him right now — he _knows_ that.

Nevertheless, Shiro has to choke down a sigh as he goes to finish getting dressed. Imagining a future for himself that _isn’t_ completely wretched makes his skin crawl more than the black spot on the wall. Squinting at the thing, Shiro thinks it might be an insect? But it’s bigger than any insect than he’s ever seen in real-life, and something about the thing makes Shiro feel like it’s watching him. When it flutters its wings, something makes Shiro’s prosthetic fingers twitch.

_Magic_? Surely, it can’t be. None of the Fae would be eavesdropping on Shiro. Would they?

Frowning, he inches toward the wall. He wrinkles his nose at the insect-thing. Certainly, it resembles an insect, and as he gets closer, he sees that it isn’t black at all but a dark, robust shade of green. Under the pale sunlight, its body glimmers in a way that can’t be natural. True, Shiro knows better than to poke a strange, unidentified _something_ while staying at Nalquod, but it sounds like a tempting idea. None of the angles he tries to examine it from gives him a better idea of what the insect-thing is made of, much less where it came from or what it’s doing here.

As if annoyed with him, it flutters its wings again. Tremors shock through Shiro’s right hand. Up close, he can see the telltale golden shimmer of Summer Court magic in the air around the fake-thorax. He gasps. He reaches out for it. But before he can touch the thing, it zips away, flitting into the third suite in this guest-apartment, the room where Regris would be sleeping if he and Keith weren’t sharing a bed.

With his shirt only half-buttoned, Shiro follows, and Ulaz trails after him. But it’s too late. By the time they get into the unoccupied suite, the insect-thing has the window opened. It turns back only briefly, and makes a sound like it’s blowing a raspberry at them. If he didn’t know better, Shiro would swear that he hears it snicker as it flies out into the cold.

As Ulaz closes up, Shiro drops onto the free bed. He shares what he saw before the insect-thing panicked and made its escape. All of which leaves him with the burning question: “Who the Hell would be spying on us?”

“There are any number of options, unfortunately.” Forcing himself to stand up straight, Ulaz folds his hands behind his back. “The golden shimmer to the magic is both telling and deeply concerning. Even so, I highly doubt that Regent Blaytz would _knowingly_ allow any of his folk to do something like this, not while we are his _guests_ —”

“So, could someone around here do it _without_ him knowing—”

“It is a possibility. But as yet, we have no conclusive evidence, and none of the clues we _do_ have point anywhere helpful.” 

Shiro gulps. “So what do we _do_ about it?”

“I will inform Kolivan of this at once,” Ulaz promises. “Although I doubt that this provides you much in the way of comfort, I advise you to mind what you say to anyone until we return home. However—” Sighing morosely, he turns to Shiro. “Yes, you have been _personally_ violated. But none of what we have discussed has any direct bearing on the matter of the summit or our budding allegiances—”

“Are you asking me not to let this incident affect me during negotiations? Because they’re too important to jeopardize?” When Ulaz gives him a solemn nod, Shiro sets his jaw and nods right back. “Duly noted. I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Thank you, Shiro. That is good enough.” And without another word, Ulaz leads Shiro back to his own quarters to make sure that he eats and takes his morning potions before attempting anything diplomacy-adjacent.


	3. Chapter 3

By the final day of the summit, Lance is ready to crawl out of his own skin. Or to lay down so many curses that he’s been saving for a special occasion — whichever is easier for him when he finally hits his breaking point. Between all of the ceremonial dinners and the lengthy debates over negotiations, Father hasn’t been available for a chat of any significance. Lance can’t handle getting ignored and dismissed like this so many times. Bastard or not, he deserves the same attention as any of his “legitimate” siblings.

Perched on his bed with her long legs crossed at the knee, Allura shakes her head and swishes her luscious, untamed locks. He’s been trying her patience for the past few days, but that doesn’t make it smart less when she rolls her eyes like Lance can’t see her reflection doing it in his looking-glass. Or possibly like she doesn’t care whether he can see or not. Knowing Allura, it could easily go either way.

“What you can’t _handle_ ,” she says primly, “is the fact that Sven Gineikiba’s real-world inspiration is attending the summit and your Father refuses to let you bombard him with the full force of your unbridled enthusiasm.”

Groaning, Lance stops mid-preen and slouches. “Apparently, his name is _Shiro_ —”

“Shirogane Takashi, yes. And I’d use that name if I thought you had a genuine interest in _him_.”

As she arches her brows, something like lightning flashes across Allura’s violet eyes. She puckers her lips in that way she did when they were still romantically entwined and she thought that Lance was lying to her. Shaking out her hair again, she explains, “However, I suspect that you only care about him because his life _very loosely_ inspired your favorite stories.”

“If I weren’t interested in Shiro as _himself_ , why would I have Pidge use her little eavesdropping beetles to learn more about him?”

Cocking a hip, Lance returns to fussing with his tunic. While it _is_ one of his favorites, something about it doesn’t feel quite right. The gossamer is colored his most favorite shade of deep blue, and the garment fits him perfectly — but he doesn’t know. He refuses to let his Father keep him from meeting Shiro before the summit’s end, and when that meeting happens, Lance cannot be seen looking too plain. If he doesn’t make a lasting impression in Shiro’s memory, then what’s the point of anything? Even if werewolves don’t live as long as other magical beings, Lance _needs_ for Shiro to remember him.

Hopefully, he’ll make himself into a fond memory for Shiro, but any memory would be better than remaining ignorant of Lance’s existence. Meeting each other could lead them into a greater adventure than anything Shiro’s survived so far, could lead to Lance sweeping Shiro off his feet in ways that no one ever thinks Lance capable of. Who knows? If Lance deploys the right tactics and uses the right moves on Shiro, then he could easily end up providing Coran with enough material for ten new _Sven Gineikiba_ books. They could become the basis for an epic love story to end all epic stories, remembered for ages.

Except that none of this will ever happen if the mysterious, heroic werewolf first sees the Summer Court’s bastard Prince looking anything less than his absolute best. Lance hums, tugging at the fabric around his shoulders. Perhaps the tunic is right, but requires different accessories?

He shouldn’t allow Allura to distract him from crafting the perfect outfit for this first meeting with his new beloved, not when so much currently hangs in the balance. But, ever insistent when she thinks she’s right, Allura leans to the side. Trying to block her reflection only makes her flick her wrist. The air around Lance shimmers pink with her magic, and the looking-glass stretches out. Once she’s satisfied, Allura shuffles aside and purses her lips.

Lance rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother trying to disguise it. “I _have_ been learning about him, Princess,” he says, even though he owes nobody any explanations, not even Allura. “His name is Shiro. Akira’s real name is Keith, and Ralph’s real name is Regris. His mundane brother’s real name is Ryou, not Erlend. Then, Shiro and Akira — wait, no, Keith. I mean, _Keith_. So, he and Shiro _aren’t_ actually brothers, adopted or not, _and_ they aren’t lovers in real life, either. They’re very deeply _loyal_ to each other, but I guess that Keith is with Ralph or Regris or whatever his name is—”

“This sounds more like you have learned details about Shiro’s life that might personally benefit you.” She tries to act as if she isn’t pouting, but when Allura folds her arms over her chest, she has the air of someone who cannot tolerate waiting. Or having one of her friends stretch the truth in ways that she doesn’t believe, as the case happens to be.

Turning to face her and placing his hands on his hips, Lance offers, “Did you know that his uncle from the latest book isn’t actually his uncle in real life? He was an old teacher who Shiro was close to.”

Frowning at her reflection and then his own, Lance gets an idea. Perhaps regaling Allura with more details will help Lance wipe that skeptical expression off her face.

“So, after he and his brother lost the rest of their human family,” Lance tells her. “That hunter commander mentored him, he was like a second father to Shiro. Apparently, Coran toned Yurak down _a lot_ in the books. He’s a Galra werewolf and Zarkon does a lot to manipulate any news that could get out about what the _real_ Yurak does and how bad it is. But he’s even _worse_ than what the books say. Shiro and his brother are twins, but Shiro was born on the Leap Year Day and Ryou wasn’t born until the first of March. And he’s working with some other werewolf called Ulaz — I think he’s maybe supposed to be Badillo in the books? Or Badillo is supposed to be him? Whichever — but he’s working with Shiro on finding the right potions to mimic the effects of medicines he used to take when he was a mundane.”

Which makes about as much sense to Lance as the vampires who act all high and mighty because they only feed on a certain kind of human, or the fact that half-Gorgons exist (because really: what kind of being would want to couple with a _Gorgon_? One without any modicum of self-respect, Lance guesses, but even that idea seems highly questionable, at best).

Werewolves can be poisoned. They can be injured in ways that require healing draughts. Some might need potions to ease nightmares, and some of the delegates around Nalquod could use a tincture or twenty to address their atrocious breath. But unless a werewolf was born mundane, like Shiro was, and had a long-term infirmity before being turned, which Shiro didn’t, they cannot come down with any naturally occurring physical illnesses. Every Faery child learns this about them, and as far as Lance knows, mages and alchemists have found effective remedies for all of the pre-extant carryover problems that turned werewolves can face.

With a snap of his fingers and a shimmer of gold, Lance summons a different necklace from his case of jewelry. This one might complement the blue tunic better: polished bronze with carved designs of frolicking mermaids, and detailing done up with inlaid lapis lazuli. Under the warm candlelight, the metalwork glimmers as if promising to Lance that putting on this particular necklace will only lead him to good things. Several years ago, Father commissioned one of his finest craftsfolk to make it especially for Lance, and he almost never has an occasion that merits wearing it. Why not his first meeting with the werewolf whom he means to take as a consort?

“Also,” he says, banishing his other accoutrements back to the dresser. “Did you know that Shiro might be the only werewolf alive, in the entire world, who _doesn’t_ take his meat so red that the animals are practically still alive?”

Allura’s eyebrow quirks so high that it threatens to jump off her forehead. “I did not know most of that,” she says. “But I still only hear the details that are most relevant to you attempting to woo him because you are enamored with the very _fictional_ version of him from Coran’s books.” For a moment, she pauses like she might let Lance off the hook. But then she needs to add, “You are so taken with _Sven_ , in fact, that you made Pidge _snoop_ and keep tabs on _Shiro_ for you. Even though he is meant to be here as your Father’s _guest_.”

“Pidge volunteered to do that,” Lance snaps, puffing up his chest like one of King Alfor’s firebirds and trying not to blush too deeply. “I didn’t even say anything about _anything_ , the first time. She would’ve kept doing it, so why can’t I get something out of it, too?”

“Did you pay any attention to the pact of guest right that your Father made during the welcoming ceremony?”

“He said the same things that he always does. But I’m not doing anything untoward with what I know, so no rules or agreements have been violated.”

“The _spirit_ of them certainly has been—”

“Have you started taking Matt too seriously? Is your name _Hunk_? Come on, since when do we care so much about the _spirit_ of the agreements?” Turning back to the mirror, Lance fastens the mermaid necklace. He arches an eyebrow right back at Allura, because if she’s watching him anyway, then she might as well get a glimpse of how ridiculous he knows she’s being. “I’ve done nothing that breaks any of the promises my Father made to the werewolves. Neither has Pidge. No one can take issue with us and there will be no consequences for it.”

“Perhaps none that are magical in nature,” says Allura. “But I can think if several consequences that might befall you if you use invasively obtained, secondhand minutiae in attempting to make romantic advances on Shiro.”

“Everything I know about Shiro so far might be secondhand, but it doesn’t _need_ to stay that way.” Lance groans. He _should_ try to restrain himself, right now. He _shouldn’t_ run his mouth off while he’s agitated and he _should_ probably allow Allura to continue thinking that she’s right. It makes her happy, and she does more than her fair share of similar things for his benefit. Moreover, Lance will get to have the last word when he wins the heart of a beautiful werewolf consort.

Yet, he can’t stop himself from biting out, “If you want to pick up where we left off so badly, Princess? You can make that known without getting jealous of me and Shiro.”

Next thing Lance knows, Allura’s reflection is gone. She grunts, but not in a way Lance can decipher easily. When he turns to find her again and make sure that she’s doing alright, she throws one of his pillow. It smacks Lance squarely in the face, making an impact without hurting him. So, Allura’s holding back but nevertheless remains annoyed. Staring at her doesn’t immediately reveal answers. If anything, she seems even more mysterious, narrowing her eyes at him as if she expects him to have something to say for himself. What does Lance even _need_ to explain to her? His intentions ought to be obvious, and they are nothing that he needs to be ashamed of going after with resolution and intensity.

Huffing and shaking out her locks, Allura folds her arms over her chest. “Darling, I have no interest in rekindling anything that we have been to each other before,” she insists, voice going colder than the Winter Court’s magic makes the air. But there’s still a note of sympathy as she explains, “I only wish for you to _reconsider_ before attempting anything too outrageous. I rather doubt that you will win yourself a consort by treating Shiro as if he is a character in your favorite books.”

“But he _is_ a character in my favorite books.” In the face of Allura’s unimpressed expression, Lance struggles not to roll his eyes. Failing to hold back, he tells her, “ _Fine_ , he _inspired_ a character in my favorite books. But that’s the same thing, in the end, isn’t it?”

“Your would-be _beloved_ ,” Allura drawls, “might disagree with that assessment.”

Lance could come up with an argument for that. If anyone asks for his opinion (and wants to give him), he could come up with an amazing rebuttal that would leave Allura questioning herself and her assumptions until the solstice — the one in summer, not the hibernal one, looming a few weeks in the future, just over the temporal horizon.

Unfortunately for Lance’s rapier wit, the door to his quarters bursts open without so much as a knock. He jumps back with an unbecoming sound. Allura springs to her feet, ready for action. In case he needs to join her in calling up a spell, Lance raises both hands. He drops them again, and groans from the pit of his chest, when he takes stock of the petite, messy-haired figure standing in the threshold.

Drowned out in her long, green robes, Pidge wrinkles her nose at Lance, then at Allura.

“Last I checked, Regent Blaytz still has laws against killing messengers,” she deadpans.

Allura sighs in palpable relief. “Pidge, we would _never_ kill one of our own friends—”

“Messengers of _what_?” Lance frowns. Pidge isn’t carrying any missives that he can see.

If she’s really bringing news, then it must be something that she’s deemed important. She could have sent one of her beetles, instead of showing up herself. And yet, here’s Pidge, glancing around Lance’s quarters as if she hasn’t been in them several times before, as if she expects something to jump out of the walls and devour her while she’s still alive. (True, that might not be an unreasonable fear in some areas of the palace, but Lance doesn’t keep anything hugely dangerous in his suites. It would be too easy to forget himself and end up injured.)

Drawing in a deep breath, she closes the door behind her. “Again? I am _only_ delivering the message, I am _not_ responsible for it and I don’t even necessarily agree with what’s happening—”

“What _is_ it, Pidge?” snaps Lance.

She sighs impatiently, but still takes a moment before telling him, “Your Father has requested that I come and inform you? That you’ve just been betrothed to one of the lycanthropic delegates, as part of solidifying the renewed alliances between them and the Fae. And he says that you should clean up, put a nice outfit together, and prepare to meet your new intended.”

Lance gulps. His knees wobble underneath him as if somebody’s hit him with a jinx. As he turns back to his mirror, his insides — his entire being, all of the magical essence at his very core — everything about him feels frozen over.

He should have laid down those special occasion curses when he had the chance.

*** * ***

Every time the delegates have reached an important agreement, Regent Blaytz has clapped his hands so hard that the chandelier in the Garnet Drawing Room has shuddered. The air around his hands shimmers gold when he does this, magic releasing itself from his palms and fingers, but doing little more than jostling the red and gold crystals hanging above the table and making the candlelight around the chamber dance. The worst part is the way that his hands make a sound like a clap of thunder when he brings them together with such force, but considering how powerful the Regent’s magic and his enthusiasm are, that could still be infinitely worse.

As the sunlight diminishes outside and the third day’s negotiations wind down, Shiro’s gotten some modicum of control over how much he flinches from the sound. All he does is tighten his grip on his own knee and he can keep his face almost perfectly neutral. No more explaining that he’s fine and nothing’s wrong, then attempting to divert the conversation onto a more useful topic. No more making himself take deep, slow breaths as subtly and quietly as he can possibly manage, or trying to ignore the fact that everyone in the room can tell he’s doing so. No more telling himself to ignore the _Pointed Glances_ that he gets from Ulaz, from Keith, from Zethrid and Regris, and even from Lotor, all of them silently asking some variation on the question, _“Are you really okay, or do you feel the need to lie about this for the sake of the summit’s success?”_

Shiro wishes he didn’t need to ignore them when they’re doing nothing wrong, but he doesn’t have any answers they’d enjoy.

He doesn’t know what else they expect from him, though. Whenever he speaks up during the negotiations, Shiro says his piece, forcing himself to look at the other delegates, so that he doesn’t seem evasive or flighty or like a liar. When he’s finished sharing any ideas, though, Shiro forces himself to count the red, green, gold, and black gemstones that are woven into the wood in front of him, hoping that he _might_ feel less compelled to look across the table at the hulking figure seated at Zarkon’s left-hand side. Sendak keeps turning his eyes on Shiro, both the organic one and the magical replacement that Honerva gave him. He snickers and cackles whenever Shiro opens his mouth, loudly enough for Shiro to hear him but so softly that he _knows_ he can’t formally complain to anyone about it. Leveling any accusations at Sendak, even when he’s earning them, could all too easily get misconstrued as an insult against their host, against the Fae as a whole.

White-haired Honerva sits to her husband’s right, and sniffs derisively at most of Shiro’s contributions. Meeting her gaze wouldn’t be particularly pleasant, either — even glancing at her for a moment makes Shiro’s blood run cold — but Shiro doesn’t feel the draw toward the maker of his prosthetic arm that he does toward Sendak. The ragged scar on his hip doesn’t ache when a shiver courses up Shiro’s spine as Honerva drags her eyes up and down his body, when she glares at his prosthetic arm, likely fuming in silence that he was so ungrateful as to leave her pack after she gave him such an alleged gift. Yet, the scar pulses hot and furious and harder than his heart when he catches so much of a glimpse of Sendak.

Much like the wolf-side coming out on the full moon nights, this is one of the things for which Ulaz has no remedy. Lycanthropy doesn’t much care for anybody’s situation, or for whether or not someone was infected by a monster. Scars from werewolf bites are magical in nature, and so they never go away. Turned werewolves always carry these remembrances of the ones who made them what they are, and nothing known to anyone can truly sever the connection forged by turning someone. Even death hasn’t been known to work with perfect certainty.

Regardless of Shiro’s difficulties, the negotiations proceed unimpeded. Agreements are reached among them, including but not limited to: any attacks on innocent folk must be investigated and any offenders punished, including any attacks on innocent mundanes, regardless of their ties to hunters, because being a hunter’s child or friend or spouse does not make someone a hunter, and they ought not be punished for others’ sins (“Which should cut both ways, considering how often Fae take advantage of humans who cannot possibly know any better,” says Haxus, sitting beside Sendak as always. “To say nothing of how many times a Fae has exacted vengeance for a slight on someone’s child or grandchild”).

Should hunters attack or make advances into magical territories, Fae and werewolves will defend each other and offer aid, as much as they can spare at any time (and King Alfor clarifies, “We must also understand that this encompasses _all_ magical beings who reside within these territories. Unaffiliated denizens of the magical woodlands are our brethren, even if they do not wish to participate in these talks or formally join us in renewing these alliances”).

Honerva and her so-called Druids may continue with their investigation of quintessence, so long as they stop prodding at some so-called rift located under Zarkon’s fortress, allow for regular inspections and reviews of their work, and follow certain regulations that the council spends the entire second day debating (“In case it needs specifying,” Alfor insists, “she _must_ also make every conceivable, reasonable effort to contain her work and minimize the risk of harm to innocents”).

And although the renewed alliances mean that werewolves and Fae are now safe in each other’s territories or protected spaces, they must respect the laws of those spaces, rather than following their own rules (Keith grabs onto Shiro’s knee under the table, and Shiro can only imagine what he’s trying to keep himself from saying. He doesn’t _want_ to imagine what might be on Keith’s mind, but even so, he _can_ think up a few ideas — most of them incredibly dangerous to say aloud, because Zarkon would likely take exception and want for vengeance).

“This only leaves the matter of _sealing_ the deal,” Blaytz exclaims, clapping again and shaking the chandelier, on the heels of the debate reaching its conclusion. “The other Fae rulers and I have discussed it amongst ourselves, and we agree that a marriage between some of our folks’ higher-ranking members would sufficiently bind us, solidify these allegiances. I have a son called Lance, who is both unmarried and unattached to anyone. A bastard, yes, but this entitles him to a certain degree of respect in our culture, as in yours. Perhaps if one of the _Princes_ —”

“Wait, _what_?” splutters Keith. When Shiro squeezes his shoulder, Keith sighs. “I’m sorry, Your Splendor. Sorry for speaking out of turn—”

“You were only startled,” says King Alfor. “We take no offense to that.”

“—But just so we’re clear on this—” Keith’s lips curl up like smoke as he glances toward Lotor. “You want one of _us_ to marry your son?”

“It _is_ Fae tradition to cement alliances with a contract. In this case, a marriage contract.” Zarkon narrows his eyes at Keith, then at his own son. Huffing, he sneers toward Kolivan. “Perhaps you should have better prepared your whelp for this possibility. Some respect for knowledge—”

Kolivan only acknowledges Zarkon by clearing his throat. Folding his hands before himself on the table, he looks to Blaytz, Alfor, Trigel, and Gyrgan as though the Galran Alpha isn’t even there. “I had the apparently mistaken belief that these negotiations would not necessarily end in a marriage,” says Kolivan. “As the leader of the Marmora, I am not opposed to this arrangement. However, my son, although unmarried, is _not_ unattached. He already has a lover.”

Shiro could swear that the orange-haired delegate at King Alfor’s side — Coran, if Shiro remembers correctly; the one who’s been taking the minutes for the past few days — breathes a sigh of relief. But glancing at him, Shiro can’t see anything _too_ notably different. Coran’s smile is the same, mind-bogglingly easy one that he’s worn every other time the negotiations went as well as anybody could possibly expect. No sign that he feels anything at all about the revelation of Keith’s attachments. With so many things that hang on the outcome of the summit and so much left that could go wrong before everything is agreed upon, Shiro can’t fathom how anyone could relax enough to let themself smile like that.

How nice for Coran, Shiro assumes. For his own part, hearing Kolivan discuss Keith’s _lover_ makes Shiro feel cold and so much smaller than he truly is. God, that good old jealousy again. Being happy about Keith finding love should make Shiro stop feeling like this. It should _stop_ making him hear reminders of their relationship as confirmations that he’s doomed to spend his life romantically alone because _nothing_ about Keith and Regris being together has anything to do with Shiro. None of it means anything about him or his life or how it might go. But here he is, gripping onto his own knee for want of a stable point and deliberately squeezing too hard so he won’t let himself disappear into his own thoughts again.

With a gruff sigh, paying no apparent mind to either Shiro or Coran, Kolivan gestures at Regris. “My son’s partner,” he explains. “They have been romantically intertwined for quite some time. If you require any proof or evidence that their love is _true_ , I am certain we can arrange for—”

“Oh, I would never think to question the veracity of true love, much less to separate lovers from one another.” Blaytz chirps as if all of this is a fun momentary setback, grinning in a way that makes Shiro feel like someone wants to hollow him out with a rusty ice cream scoop, bit by bit until there’s nothing left at all. He leans forward in his seat and turns toward Lotor. “I can’t say for certain how some other Fae might take the alliance being solidified with a marriage to a Prince who is already half-Fae himself. Some of them might prefer it. Others might call your commitments into question. But public opinions will always differ—”

“What the rabble would think matters very little,” Lotor drawls, curling his hand around Acxa’s. “I, too, am unmarried but not unattached.”

The fact that Lotor can lie to the Fae rulers’ faces without any of them noticing makes something inside of Shiro want to scream. Although Acxa and Lotor are not siblings, they almost look like they could be. Fittingly, Shiro guesses, since her father was a Winter Court noble before eloping with her werewolf mother. Angling themselves toward each other as they do now, they look like they could easily be lovers too. But they aren’t and never have been. Moreover, Lotor _knows_ that several of the folk seated at this table know this. Shiro does, for starters. So do Zethrid, Ezor, Narti, Regris, Ulaz, and Keith. Zarkon and Honerva _might_ , but then again, they might not care enough to keep up with the details of their wayward son’s life.

Humming pensively, Blaytz wrings his hands. “So, this is… Potentially quite problematic,” he says. “My apologies, dear guests. But I did not know that _both_ of the Princes had already taken lovers… If I had, then we — the other rulers and I — we would have discussed something else, more alternate possibilities…”

“There _are_ higher-ranking werewolf nobles, if not a proper Prince.” Growling hungrily, Sendak leers at the group. Even without turning it on Shiro specifically, he makes the scar on Shiro’s hip throb. He takes one of Haxus’s hands in his own. “I have a partner of my own as well, but several of my best lieutenants—”

“What about a Champion?”

Shiro’s entire face flushes as he realizes what he’s said. He digs his fingers hard into one knee while Keith’s hand clamps down on the other one. A few deep breaths get Shiro’s heartbeat steadied, and he makes himself look Regent Blaytz in the eye. Partly, it’s respectful, but mostly, it’s a matter of emotional survival. On one side of him, Shiro has Ulaz and Keith staring at him so hard that he can feel it. On the other, Sendak has both of his eyes trained on Shiro again and the magical one makes Shiro’s skin crawl, even without him looking at it. In front of him, the other Fae rulers look varying degrees of shocked, and if Shiro didn’t know better, he would think that Coran looked _scandalized_ by this idea and possibly quite ready to faint.

Nodding, more to reassure himself than anybody else, Shiro says, “I mean that offer seriously, Your Splendor. I may not be a Prince, or a _born_ werewolf? But I _am_ regarded as a Champion. Keith and Lotor both count me as a close comrade. The Galran werewolf who turned me is nobility, one of Lord Zarkon’s proteges—” Sendak hisses, and protectively, Keith tightens his grip on Shiro’s knee.

But Shiro bites back any response to either of them because he cannot allow himself to be distracted. Not right now, not with so much resting on these allegiances being cemented. He keeps explaining, “The Marmoran werewolf who took me in when I left the Galra pack? He is likewise nobility—”

“I also want you to give this proposal due consideration, Shiro,” says Ulaz. “You do _not_ need to make any—”

“—If it pleases you, Your Splendor,” Shiro continues, unable to completely tune out the chill spreading in the pit of his stomach from the unreadable, borderline incomprehensible _look_ that Blaytz is giving him. “I’ve done what little I can to help all magical beings. My only mundane family is my twin brother, and Kolivan, Thace, and Ulaz can vouch for his safety. I would _prefer_ not to lose him as a result of this arrangement? If you wish to interrogate him yourself before agreeing to this, then I’m sure he would be amenable—”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, youngling,” says King Alfor, although he looks to Blaytz for a nod of assent before continuing. “Separating magical beings from their mundane families would be a violation of some of our most sacred codes. So long as your brother will not reveal the secrets of our world, then there is no reason why marrying Prince Lance should keep you from him.”

Shiro appreciates that. But it won’t be worth much of anything if he can’t get the rest of the way through saying, “If it would be a satisfying match, and prove an acceptable show of our commitment to the alliance between your folk and the werewolves? Then I would offer _myself_ as a potential husband for your son.”

Blaytz pauses for a long moment, considering the offer. He turns his eyes up to the chandelier and something heavy drops into the pit of Shiro’s stomach. Oh God, did he just tank everything that the past few days have worked toward? Did Shiro just get ahead of himself, get incredibly presumptuous about how much he’s really worth and what it means for him to be the Champion, and render the negotiations and the summit pointless? Did he, in trying to keep someone from being married off to one of Sendak’s _monsters_ , ruin all the work that everyone else has put into recreating the alliances that Zarkon once destroyed?

But finally, Blaytz looks back to Shiro with a smile — an inscrutable one, but definitely, undeniably a smile.

“Indeed, I would find this match most satisfying,” he says, nodding. “And I believe that my son would concur. Allow me to send one of my mages to alert the Prince, and then, we can make the agreement between our groups properly binding. Discuss the conditions of the marriage and how to make it as pleasing as possible for everyone. Once that’s finished, we can take you to meet your new betrothed.”

Between Keith’s hand clutching at his knee and the glares from all sides that make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on-end, Shiro feels like he should have something intelligent to say about this. But the negotiations are ending on a good note. The alliances are coming back. Even if Coran, trembling at King Alfor’s side, radiates the same uncertainty that writhes and twists around in Shiro’s lungs and stomach like a mixed pit of worms and vipers, most of the delegates seem perfectly content. Lotor is downright glowing as Regent Blaytz sends the short, slightly built young mage off to get his son. Honerva’s sneer seems to say that, in her mind, Prince Lance is getting an unfairly good deal out of this arrangement, not being forced to marry _her_ son. Or on the other hand, she might feel relieved that she won’t be required to care about a new son-in-law.

Dimly, Shiro realizes that it might be asking for too much, hoping that maybe Prince Lance won’t hate him. Yet, as he forces himself not to slouch and forces his breaths to stay as measured and even as possible, Shiro can’t quite help it. If they’re going to do this, then he’d like it if maybe his husband won’t spend their entire marriage silently wishing him dead.


	4. Chapter 4

Throwing his things together should be a much easier task, in Lance’s mind. He starts in on it as soon as Pidge reveals the fate that his Father has chosen for him and joins Allura in perching on his bed. As the sky outside slides into its guise of night-time black, Lance has yet to finish his preparations. For all they haven’t said anything aloud so far, Pidge and Allura seem to agree with his unspoken opinion about how this should be going faster, and how he ought to have finished and gone out his window, into the snow, and over the hills to his escape already.

At the very least, they agree that this shouldn’t be taking so long. Anyway, that’s what he’s getting out of them right now. As Lance dumps his collection of _Sven Gineikiba_ books into one of his trunks, both Pidge and Allura sigh in palpable exasperation. Why would they be making sounds like that at him if they _didn’t_ think Lance needed to hurry up?

“You could do more to help me,” he tells Pidge, when he catches her rolling her eyes about what he’s up to and his notions of vanishing from his Father’s Court entirely. “If you’re gonna sit there and judge, why not help me decide what I’m taking with me or not.”

Pidge shrugs. “Because I get why you might not want this? But I also think you’re being pretty ridiculous.”

Lance wrinkles his nose. “Did my _Father_ tell you to say something like that? Try to keep me from doing exactly this?”

“He didn’t even care what I told you about getting engaged to one of the werewolves.” Pushing her glasses up her nose, Pidge huffs as if she’s genuinely offended. She might be, but she still bothers telling him, “Your Father seemed to think that you’d be _happy_ about the match he made for you. He kept talking like it’d be an awesome surprise.”

Groaning, Lance returns to his work. Why Father would _ever_ think that Lance might enjoy being auctioned off to the highest bidder is beyond him — but that’s no matter. Nothing worth giving any serious consideration, not when time is short.

Perhaps Lance could try to hurry, but leaving his home? Getting out when he has no intention to come back? There are too many things that he might forget, and yet, he cannot take everything with him into his new life. Even with magically enhanced luggage, he has to pick and choose what he carries with him. Too many things taken with him and he’ll ruin his entire plan (such as it can be called a plan). He’ll need more magic to conceal them, more magic to make it so he can lug them around more easily. Magic leaves traces and traces can be followed. If he’s going to run from a marriage like this, then Lance cannot stand for anybody coming and tracking him down. For them to succeed thanks to his own negligence would be even worse. He has to rifle through his royal apartment for the trinkets and possessions of his that he would most hate to miss, sift through his closets and his wardrobes for his most favorite outfits.

“What about any gifts?” he says to Allura, mostly thinking aloud, flicking his wrist to move a box of old journals up onto his bed so won’t need to strain himself before he makes his escape. Even his best charmwork can’t completely remove the weight from his luggage and Lance will need all his stamina intact for this to work. As much of it as he can save up, at least. “From the mundanes who still honor us? Where do you think I’ll find the most? Probably in one of their major cities, right?”

Allura stares at him flatly and drums her fingertips on the bed. “You wouldn’t survive living in a mundane city.”

“I could so do it—”

“You require too much care and attention to live by yourself,” she points out, firmly but not unkindly. “And you have spent your entire life around our kind and other magical beings. All of the mundanes you’ve ever dealt with have been those who directly gave you tributes. You don’t know how to keep The Silence, and using your magic to make them forget would make it easy for your Father to find you. When that happened, he would bring you back here and you would be married.”

Everything she’s saying twists in Lance’s lungs. He can’t dispute a word of that argument. Worse yet, Allura knows that he can’t argue with her, and maybe Lance could handle that if she would make one of the smug expressions that she gets when she knows how right she is. Instead, she gives him a small, inexplicable smile that would look laden down with pity if anyone else dared to turn it on Lance.

Apparently, Pidge can find pieces that Allura’s missing, though. She chimes in with, “Well, you _may_ not end up married, in that situation? But only if your Father could somehow persuade the werewolves not to dissolve the alliances with us all over again. He could get somewhere with the Marmora, I think, but with Zarkon? I wouldn’t bet on it. In the event that the Galra pack _didn’t_ consider things completely beyond repair? Best way to do salvage the alliance would _probably_ be marrying Allura off to your intended instead. Then, your Father would be obligated to find you and have you punished for crimes against our allies.”

“Wait up, who said that?” Lance splutters. “What in creation are you _talking_ about?”

“I heard it with my beetles. Not that they said this explicitly, but on the first day of the summit—”

“What do rules like that have to do with Shiro? How do they have _anything_ to do with…”

Despite being so small in stature, Pidge manages a glare and a sneer that send a chill straight down Lance’s back. “I only told you anything about Shiro because you seemed restless and I thought it would make you _happy_ ,” she says. “While some of my beetles kept their eyes on him? I used my _best_ ones to keep up on the negotiations. It wasn’t fair for them to keep us out when _we’re_ affected by the outcome, too—”

“Fine, I admit it. I’m being _selfish_. But what exactly else do you want me to _do_ right now, _Katie_?”

Using that name for Pidge doesn’t carry the same weight as using her _True Name_ , the name that all mages must discover for themselves, which they share with almost no one. Granted, Lance doesn’t know Pidge’s _True Name_ , so he can’t tell how it might or might not affect her. Everything he knows about how _True Names_ even work, like everything he knows about Shirogane Takashi, is secondhand at best. But calling Pidge, _“Katie”_ always makes her inhale sharply and go red in the face and glower at him in a way that will likely never stop being funny.

Except this time, it also makes her scowl at him harder, narrowing her eyes like she can see through him perfectly, right down to the core of his being. Still, Lance tries to meet Pidge’s gaze with a dirty look of his own. He tries to summon up everything he can to make his expression as menacing and intimidating as possible. When it only makes Pidge snort at him, he hugs himself. Allows himself to slouch at the hips. If his Mother caught him standing like this, even in such a casual setting and even simply in the company of two close friends, then Lance would be in for a lecture about how a Prince of the Summer Court should always, in all situations, present himself at his very best.

Which is a great theory, but _Mother_ probably never thought that Father would put Lance in a position like he’s in right now.

“There are enclaves in some of the major mundane cities, right? Maybe I can get to one of them and then I won’t have to be _alone_ or anything. If I explain the situation, then they probably won’t rat me out to my Father…” Trailing off, Lance whines and tightens his hold on his own arms. He hunches in on himself. “Come on, you two _know_ that I can’t stay here with everything that’s—”

“Why not?” says Allura, as if it’s really just that easy. “You haven’t even met your intended yet—”

“I don’t _want_ to meet them!” Lance doesn’t mean to snap at her like this. He doesn’t mean to let his cheeks flush hot, either. But since he has, there’s no going back, and he might as well make himself perfectly clear about what, exactly, he means to say. “If I’m going to be with any werewolf, then want to meet _Shiro_. I want to win _Shiro’s_ heart, make _Shiro_ love me—”

“You might yet. You _don’t know_ who you’re marrying—”

“I don’t want to get sent to live with some _other_ werewolf like I don’t even mean _anything_ —”

“Technically?” says Pidge. “Your Father _wouldn’t_ have offered a marriage to you if didn’t mean anything—”

“You _know_ that isn’t what I meant, okay!” Stomping might make Lance look immature. It makes the air around him shimmer gold and it makes the artwork on his wall tremble. But at the moment, he doesn’t have the wherewithal to care how childish he looks. “Come on, are we still living in the thirteenth century? My Father offered me up for these alliances without even _asking_ me what I wanted. He has other children who aren’t attached. Why do I need to be the one who marries anybody?”

Regardless of how he looks, Lance starts pacing around his quarters. Standing still is making his skin crawl like he got on the wrong side of a mage who specialized in the naturalist’s path, like they’re making insects come to life and wriggle underneath his skin. For all he should get back to packing, shouldn’t let himself be distracted by this argument or defending himself when he knows that leaving is the right answer, Lance can’t focus on that when Pidge and Allura are making his head feel like such an awful mess. He can barely come up with what to say next, while the two of them are sitting there and watching him as if they’re worried he might lose control of his magic and make the room explode. Whatever — Lance hasn’t done that in ages, not since he and Allura were still learning how to control their abilities. He almost wants to tell them to shove off if they won’t help him.

But if they did, Lance wouldn’t have a sounding board. No one to listen as he says, “Anyway, you _know_ that the werewolves would never offer up a decent match. The Marmoran Prince is taken anyway, Pidge’s beetles heard him and Shiro say so. But the other Prince is _Zarkon and Honerva’s_ son, and I’m sorry? But based on what I’ve seen of him in the past few days, I’d rather not be in the same _room_ as him, never mind a _bedchamber_ , literally never, ever, so long as I exist—”

“As I already said,” Allura drawls. “You have no idea to whom you’ve been affianced—”

“I don’t _need_ to know anything about them!” Lance’s voice echoes off his walls and ceiling. Staring her down, he tries not to shout again, but doesn’t back off from saying, “If they aren’t Zarkon’s son, then they’re going to be even _worse_. The werewolves hate us for trying to hold them accountable. There’s no way they’d offer up someone _worthy_. Maybe that Marmora leader guy would try to counter Zarkon, but in the end? They’re bound to have made my Father accept a match between me and some slobbering, barely sentient, disgusting, Galra _monster_.”

Something creaks behind Lance, and Allura makes a noise like she wants him to shut up. But she’s not the one who’s getting thrown to some mangy brigand who’s more wolf than were, and Lance is on a roll: “And whoever they are, you know that they won’t respect me. Probably the best I can hope for? Is that they’ll act like I’m some kind of _trophy_. Show me off to all their packmates like they actually won me and make all the other _beasts_ start drooling. They’ll probably try to hunt for human flesh on the full moon nights and expect me to lie for them while treating me like _garbage_. How can you sit there and tell me that this _isn’t_ terrible when it is? Like, it objectively and clearly is, without question, the most _horrible_ thing that has ever—”

“ _Lance_.”

Father’s voice makes Lance stop dead. He snaps back into standing up straight and hugs himself tight enough that it starts to hurt. Inhaling sharply, Lance nods to acknowledge that he hears Father, and that yes, Pidge told him about his betrothal for the sake of solidifying the alliances. He says nothing, not even when offered the chance to do so. Explaining himself wouldn’t help Lance’s situation any. Not when he’s has been caught in the act of mouthing off about how much he hates the idea of this marriage.

Considering everything that Lance has said, Father probably thinks that his youngest son is spitting in the very face of the alliance that he’s worked so hard to help create. There can’t be other explanation for why he forces himself to use that fake laugh of his and that jangly, overly pleasant tone. It’s the same voice he uses when somebody at court accidentally blows up a spell and makes a mess of the throne room. It’s the same voice he uses when Lance comes into one of the studies while he’s working and starts babbling at him about something that Father doesn’t understand or particularly care about. Maybe Lance should look Father in the eye while he’s being tacitly reprimanded, but hearing this voice from him is bad enough. He doesn’t need to see how disappointed in him Father is.

Finally, Father sighs in something almost but not entirely like exasperation. His façade of happiness comes back as he tells Lance, “Come on now, my son. Don’t be so impolite. Turn around and meet your new intended. Give him a chance, and you might be surprised.”

Lance tries to hold back on a groan, but he can’t bite down a sigh of his own. Great. Not only has Father overheard him complaining about this match, but Lance’s new _fiancé_ has heard so much of what he thinks, as well. He’s probably lucky that no one’s running to break off these alliances right now, on his account. Lingering might take that chance away from Lance, and so he turns toward his chamber door. No matter how much he doesn’t want to face this werewolf or likely be called on to explain himself, Lance takes a deep breath and forces himself to look up from the floor.

As soon as he does, his mouth falls open. His eyes threaten to pop out of his skull, they go so wide. The werewolf standing beside Father in the threshold is beautiful in a way that so many of Father’s courtiers only wish that they could achieve. Somewhat taller than Father, he wears all-black, aside from the purple gemstone pendant on his necklace — amethyst, most likely, hewn into a knifelike shape, the sigil of the Marmora pack. Even slouching and trying not to look intimidating, he can’t keep his broad shoulders and muscular chest from stretching the limits of his button-up shirt and suit jacket. Rather likewise, his razor-sharp, clean-shaven jawline strains Lance’s ideas of what facial structures should be possible outside of sirens and succubi and the other beings who lure mundane prey to them with seduction.

None of that is what dries up Lance’s mouth so badly that his throat starts withering as well. The soft, tired, and doleful grey eyes sure help with that. So does the scar across his nose and cheeks, faded pink against the warm-toned but pallid-seeming tawny of his skin. The desiccation gets an extra jolt from his forelock that’s inexplicably white, while the rest of his hair is black. But it’s his right hand that really does the job. Pursing his lips, he drags his fingers back through his bangs and the candlelight dances off their silvery surface. _Oh, no_ , Father did _not_ seriously manage this and _not_ have Pidge _tell Lance so_. This can’t be real, yet—

“Lance,” Father says, shepherding the fiancé into Lance’s chamber and motioning for his son to come closer. “May I present your new betrothed, Shirogane Takashi, called the Champion, a prominent, up-and-coming young member of the Pack of Marmora, under the guidance of Ulaz. I believe _Takashi_ is your given name, is it not? Your personal name, I mean. Would you prefer for us to call you—”

“‘Shiro’ is fine, er. If it please you, Your Spl— I’m sorry. Your _Grand_ Splendor.” That isn’t a huge misstep, around the Summer Court. Father doesn’t seem to notice, and he never makes anyone else use the full address if they don’t feel so inclined. Nevertheless, as Shiro nods toward Lance, his cheeks flush strawberry red, as if he’s committed a grave error and humiliated his entire pack in the so doing. “Your Highness.”

Clapping Shiro on the shoulder, Father beams. “‘Shiro,’ then. I like that name. It’s a strong name, robust. And, Shiro…” With his free hand, gestures at Lance. “My youngest son, Prince Lance of the Summer Court, Lord-to-Be of our manor at the Blue Lion Lake.”

“Thank you, Your Grand Splendor.” Shiro nods. He loops his thumbs through the loops along the waistband of his trousers and his face makes obvious the effort he’s putting into _not_ slouching any further. He has no idea what kind of posture you’re supposed to use in this situation, but then again, he wasn’t born a werewolf. Before the silence between them can go on too long, Shiro swallows thickly and tells Lance, “The pleasure and the privilege are mine, Your Highness.”

His voice is so solemn that, if Lance didn’t know any better, he’d mistake Shiro for a vampire. Not one of the gorgeous walking cadavers, either, the ones who use their own form of glamours to pass as mundanes and use sexual magnetism to lure in their prey. No, Shiro sounds like one of the vampires who never entirely lose touch with their so-called _humanity_ , who retain those feelings more than the rest of their brethren and so often let that sentiment destroy them. The ones who don’t end up deliberately unmaking their own immortal existences when they decide that life is nothing more than suffering? They go cry and spill their torrid secrets all over confessional texts that the exceptionally savvy of their number present to the mundanes as poetry or works of fiction.

Lance would _hope_ that Shiro has more class and self-respect than said leeches — but on the other hand? Something about his tone sounds so _miserable_ and so _resigned_. He might as well be apologizing to Lance and saying, _“I know that you aren’t getting any privilege out of this meeting, you don’t need to pretend otherwise.”_

But, not allowing Lance to ruminate on this, Father nudges him closer to Shiro with a firm hand resting between Lance’s shoulder-blades. To Pidge and Allura, he says, “Ladies, if you please? I believe we should allow the grooms-to-be some time alone to get better acquainted. Provided you two maintain some decorum, of course. No ravishing each other or any of that. Remember, you haven’t married each other yet!”

Father laughs at this remark, motioning for Pidge and Allura to come along, but going pale, Shiro shuts his eyes. Speaking softly, he agrees to “behave” himself without objection or protest, not about his character or whether he would truly ravish someone or any of it. Lance tries not to let himself frown, but he doesn’t know what else to _do_ , when Shiro looks like he might actually be falling ill.

Which must’ve been Father’s fault, making an ill-conceived joke like that. He had a werewolf consort, long before Lance was born. Not only should he _know better_ , but Father’s concerns are at best unfounded. If he believes that there’s any danger of Shiro and Lance getting up to anything untoward this evening, then Lance would love a sample of whatever tinctures his Royal Herbalists have given him today. As Father leads Pidge and Allura out of Lance’s chambers, Shiro has an unmistakably grim look on his face, tight-lipped and wide-eyed and distinctly scared of _something_. As the door closes — not shut all the way but near enough — Shiro even seems to flinch. Absolutely nothing about the way Shiro hangs his head seems to indicate that he has any intentions of touching Lance in the first place, much less _ravishing_ him properly.

When Shiro thrusts his right hand forward, Lance gapes and blinks at it as if no one’s ever done this to him before. Plenty of them have, though none of their hands ever reflected the gleaming candlelight like his does. His cheeks twinge pink again when Lance doesn’t take his hand — but then he looks down at something behind Lance’s shoulder and he sighs.

“My arm is made of _luxite_ ,” Shiro says, looking Lance in the eye for the first time. “Not cold iron.”

“…Huh?” is all Lance can manage to say.

“You don’t need to be afraid of shaking my hand. Luxite isn’t naturally harmful to Fae.” He gives Lance a moment, but when Lance doesn’t move to do anything, Shiro sighs again. More impatiently, this time. “Honerva herself made my prosthetic. She couldn’t have done that if it were made of cold iron, right?”

Furrowing his brow, he twists around to see if he can find what Shiro was looking at before, like maybe any of this will make more sense if they have a shared frame of reference. Fortunately, it jumps right out at Lance.

Unfortunately, it’s his collection of _Sven Gineikiba_ books, clearly visible on top of the other contents of that trunk. Oh, right, Sven’s magical arm was made for him by other werewolves, after being taken from him by a vampire. They made it from cold iron because some vampires are even more susceptible to it than the Fair Folk. Blushing, Lance plasters on a grin that strains against his face, but when he forces a bashful chuckle, Shiro doesn’t smile. Likewise, his lips don’t quirk when Lance tries to shrug as if anyone could have made this mistake.

“Sorry for the confusion?” Lance tries to start. He makes himself laugh, the same way as his Father does, but he can’t help it. Shiro’s eyes are fixed on him now, every bit as tired as they were before but making something inside of Lance jerk his stomach every which way, unsure if it’s going to settle on scorching him or making him freeze over. “Honestly, though, Beautiful?” he says. “With everything your arm can do? Can you _blame_ me for thinking that it _might_ have been cold iron?”

Shiro supposed that he can’t hold that against Lance, no. He adds that he can even see the logic of thinking that his arm might be cold iron, and he might think similarly, if he were a Fae and his primary source of information came from _Sven Gineikiba_ and his adventures — so, they’re moving in a positive direction now, right? Something warm and bright and hopeful spills out all over Lance’s inner chest, curling itself around his heart. His insides flutter like he’s playing host to some of Pidge’s beetles and they’re doing somersaults every which way that they feel like. This should be something good for him and his new betrothed, right here, Shiro understanding Lance’s position and not holding the cold iron hand assumption against him.

But before Lance can try to finally shake his hand, Shiro folds both of them behind his back.

All he says by way of explanation is, “The stories in the books are exaggerated. To put it mildly.”

Lance’s face scrunches up until he feels like a rabbit. He _must_ look like one. Hopefully, he’s a cute rabbit in Prince’s clothing, the sort of rabbit in Prince’s clothing whom Shiro might not mind taking to the bedchamber on their wedding night. Except Lance can’t rightly tell what Shiro thinks of him. All he knows for sure is that Shiro drops his gaze again, not looking even vaguely in the direction of the books, simply trying to find a way not to look at Lance.

“Come on, I don’t _bite_ ,” Lance lets slip out before he can think better of it. “Unless you ask nicely and you’re into… that, I… I mean, you…”

On one hand, Shiro decides to look at Lance again, hence the trailing off.

On the other, though, his dejected expression sends a cold shock through the Lance’s veins, as if the ichor traces in his blood have disappeared and taken the magical essence with them. He draws in a deep breath, but it doesn’t make his hands stop trembling. So they won’t send off any unwanted spellwork, Lance laces his fingers together and busies himself with wringing them.

“I won’t bite you, either, Your Highness,” he says as though this explains anything. “Nor will I _devour_ you. I give you my word.”

Which it _doesn’t_ , and feeling more than completely lost, Lance splutters, “Who said that you _would_ , though? I wouldn’t mind it, if you did — in your… _this_ form? That’d be safe for biting me, not like any other shapes? What do you call it, when you’re like _this_ instead of wolfier? You’d call it your human shape, I guess? Or human form, maybe?”

Somehow, Shiro’s shoulders find even further to droop. Shaking his head, he says, “Some of us like that term. Others like the term, ‘homid shape’ or, ‘hominid shape.’ Still more of us say, ‘human-passing shape,’ which is the term that I use. It’s the same thing as how some of us like to call ourselves, _‘loup-garous’_ instead of, _‘werewolf.’_ There _can_ be certain important distinctions between some of those terms, though. The _Pricolici_ are not the same kind of lycanthropes as the _Faoladh_ or the _Kveldulfs_.”

He brings his right hand forward again, but only uses it to push his hair off his forehead. “The only differences is that terms like, ‘human form’ can never be accurate for werewolves, no matter what groups or sub-species we belong to.” Finally, Shiro looks at Lance again, and Lance wants so _badly_ to enjoy having Shiro’s eyes fixed on him exclusively. But something about the way he frowns sends _guilt_ worming through Lance’s chest, and it gets so much worse when Shiro explains, “None of us are _human_.”

“What, is that a _bad_ thing, now?” Lance’s hands find their way to his hips, instead of letting him wring them together. “Why would anybody in their right mind _want_ to be a mundane?”

Shiro flinches again, as if he’s been smacked, pressing his lips so close together that they almost disappear. At once, a litany of apologies surges out of Lance’s mouth. He isn’t even paying attention to what he’s saying or what he’s claiming to be sorry for, only spitting out the words as soon as they come to his tongue in the hopes that maybe, they’ll make Shiro feel better. Or at least get him to stop looking so kicked down. Problem is, Lance doesn’t rightly know what he _should_ apologize for, either, because he’s _right_. Mundanes are weak and powerless. They almost never get the chance to appreciate the infinity, subtle workings all around them or to see the world as it really is. So many of the ones who _do_ catch a glimpse of the magical world end up trying to hunt down magical beings and destroy them.

“I used to be a human, Your Highness,” Shiro points out, cutting Lance off with a voice that’s wound so tightly — straining around itself and so impossibly taut — it’s a miracle that his vocal cords don’t snap. “A _mundane_ , as you say. It wasn’t terribly long ago, either. I still remember how it felt to be a human. I remember—”

“But you’ve got something _better_ in your life now, right?” Lance protests. “You’re stronger, faster, there are so many things you couldn’t do and—”

“I’m a _beast_ now, as you said, Highness. A _monster_ —”

“You’re with the Marmora, though.” Lance shouldn’t roll his eyes, he knows he shouldn’t. Even so, he lets himself have that little gesture. If he’s going to get called out about thins he said, then at least, they could be presented in their proper context. “I said that about the _Galra_ pack, and… I mean, come on. With everything they’ve done under Zarkon? Everyone they’ve hurt? I thought most werewolves hated them as much as the rest of us—”

“The one who _turned me_ was a Galra.” Worse than its too-tight tone, Shiro’s voice sounds like he’s going cold. Not that he wants to treat Lance coldly, but like something about this conversation is giving birth to icebergs in his chest. “No, I don’t like what Zarkon lets them get away with. Yes, I hate the destruction and the slaughter that he sees as being _part of werewolf culture_. But the curse inside me? It’s Galra. It will always be Galra. Renouncing them for the Marmora can’t change the fact of where I come from, lycanthropically speaking.”

“Oh, my…” Lance groans. Without concern for how he doesn’t have an invitation, he grabs at Shiro’s wrist when he sees one moving. The organic arm’s skin is warm under Lance’s palm, and he blushes only slightly less than Shiro does. Lance would gladly say nothing else and only hold onto his betrothed, but he makes himself get out the words: “Shiro, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. But I didn’t _know_ , and you said that the books weren’t _accurate_ —”

“They aren’t, but you don’t need to apologize, Your Highness. As you said, you _didn’t_ know, so I should apologize to you for speaking out of turn like that.” Briefly, his eyes dart up like he might look at Lance again, but instead, he closes them while confessing, “You were speaking out of hurt and fear, when you said what I overheard before. That’s more than fair a response, in this situation, and it’s nobody’s place to take that away from you. Were I in your position, I wouldn’t want to be married off to me, either.”

_What in the world does **that** mean—_ Quietly, Lance gapes at Shiro, for all he knows better.

He knows better than to leave such a statement hanging with no response, as well. If somebody says something like that, then you’re supposed to tell them _something_ in response. It makes Lance wish that he could lie, even though Shiro sounds so painfully, impossibly earnest. According to every siren Lance has ever met, if you can’t come up with a truth to tell, then you should lie instead so you don’t meet someone’s confession like this with dead silence and nothing else.

Yet, he doesn’t find anything to say before Shiro opens those beautiful gray eyes and turning them on Lance again. Behind them, so much pain glimmers like broken glass, it digs its claws into Lance’s chest and makes him feel like he might start tearing up.

“I’m not offended that you don’t want to be with me, Highness,” he says, far too gently. “Your Father wishes for us to marry on the solstice. Before that, my pack’s leader would have you move into our main homestead, where I live. He and your Father think that it might help you adjust to staying with me there… Might help the pack get used to you, as well. Most of them haven’t spent much time around your folk in their lives… You shouldn’t need to trouble yourself with their comfort, but Kolivan…”

Shiro trails. Sighs. Looks down to Lance’s hand curled around his wrist, but going increasingly slack. “For what it’s worth, I promise not to hold you back as your husband,” he says. “Should you need a defender or protector, then I hope you might accept what I can offer. Any Faery customs that you would have me honor or uphold, I will do my best to respect them to your satisfaction. And whatever I can do to make our marriage as painless as possible for you? To make you as comfortable as you can be, as the husband of a beast? I will see it done. You deserve at least that much.”

Once more, Lance wants so desperately to say something, _anything_. But all the words disappear from his mind as Shiro tugs his wrist out of Lance’s hold and bids him, _“Good evening, Your Highness,”_ with his unspecified thanks. Maybe it’s all in Lance’s mind, but something doesn’t sound quite right, hearing Shiro call him _Highness_. It makes no sense; he’s always loved hearing that from other people and Shiro hasn’t said _Your Highness_ with any unkindness in his voice. Even so, it feels wrong. Like even though they’ve only just met each other, the fact that they’re engaged to be married ought to exempt Shiro from the usual rules of proper courtly address.

Watching Shiro silently slink out chamber door, Lance only stares, half-agog and wondering what it would take to make Shiro call him by his name.


	5. Chapter 5

Once they return home from the summit, Shiro sulks out into the courtyard without a care for how late it is. The frozen air bites at his cheeks and the snow crunches under his bare feet as he steps onto the back deck. He wishes he would shiver as he strips out of his jacket, his button-up shirt, his pants and underwear. He wishes that he could ignore the sharp way that Keith inhales or Ulaz whispering a promise that Shiro’s newer injuries look far worse than they truly are. Sliding the window-door shut behind him, Shiro makes out Kolivan instructing the others to give him some space to himself — and to consider that an order, if it means they will respect Shiro’s privacy.

“He has just made an enormous decision,” their leader tells them. “He has entered into a significant commitment for all our benefits. Let him reflect on this choice and come to grips with it in peace. _Without_ any of the pack’s influence working on him, in any direction and no matter how much you feel you can restrain yourself.”

Which sounds just fine, in theory, but as he shifts into his wolf-form and slinks down the stairs to ground-level, Shiro doesn’t expect it to last. The last clause, in particular, sounds like Kolivan means it specifically for his son. There’s only so long that Shiro can pace around the courtyard, only so much time he can wander through the snowed-in spaces that will contain all manner of fauna when spring returns or chase his tail around the trees before Keith decides to ignore their leader — give or take Ulaz and Antok and Regris and Thace — and come out with a mind to drag Shiro back into the warmth. Depending on how Ulaz feels about Shiro’s choice, he might even come assist. Keith is strong enough on his own, but Ulaz can too easily lift Shiro, toss him over his shoulder, and carry him inside.

Attempting not to dwell too much on that possibility, Shiro shakes out his fur and ambles as far as he can get from the deck. There’s more than enough space to traverse in the courtyard, even with three sides of it closed in by the Marmoran homestead’s walls looming over him, stretching up for three stories and still only revealing a small portion of their operation. Most of their enclave is underground, according to Kolivan, for reasons of safety. On the fourth side of the rectangle, two suspended walkways connect the second and third floors to each other. Underneath of them is a gate that leads out to what lies beyond the Marmora’s grounds. It’s fairly easy to open, and Shiro’s done so more times than of his packmates likes. But tonight, he stays where they can see him.

Above him, wherever he roams, the night sky is almost perfectly black. If not for the waning moon insisting upon itself as always, the only light at all would come from the stars and some of the upstairs rooms where other packmates have their lights on while working late. Strictly speaking, none of them ever _needs_ a lamp and the ones hanging in the courtyard are only ever lit when the pack entertains a mundane visitor. Whenever Regris gets on one of his heavy environmentalist kicks, he points out that they can see just fine without extra light and he has a point. Darkvision and low-light vision are some of the parts of lycanthropy that would get mentioned in a sales pitch, if any werewolf felt the need to make one before turning someone.

Still, Shiro can’t begrudge his packmates their lamps. For one thing, those abilities are easier to access when one is transformed, and it’s harder to read or write without opposable thumbs, so additional light sources make sense. For another, though, it’s like his wish to shiver: using a lamp while working, like being genuinely affected by a natural chill, would make Shiro feel like a person, and not a monster or a beast.

In lieu of that, Shiro can at least curl up and sleep by the hawthorn tree, burrowing into the snow, and the dirt, and his wolf-form side’s inability to get so lost in their own thoughts, it looks like they might not return to Earth, this time.

Come morning, Shiro finds his clothes missing off the deck. He sniffs, but the snow make it difficult to pick out the thief’s scent, aside from how it belongs to someone in the pack. With a roll of the eyes, he skulks back into the garden. Whatever, he didn’t really want to shift back anyway, and he has even less desire to duck through the homestead’s corridors completely in the buff.

Not long thereafter, Keith ventures out with a plate of meat for breakfast and a bowl of water. His tray has Shiro’s morning potions in smaller bowls as well, because missing a dose of those can be even worse than missing a dose of his mundane antidepressants used to be. As always, they have a heady, acrid stink and Shiro cringes at it, remembering how they go down slowly and taste impossibly bitter. Still, he chokes them down. While he does, Keith reminds him that he doesn’t need to go through this alone. They’re friends, and Shiro can talk to him. Or to Ulaz, if he’d rather. Because they’re here for him, and the pack appreciates what he’s doing, agreeing to marry Prince Lance.

For all Shiro lets Keith ruffle his ears, he heads back to the ground as soon as he’s done eating and taking his medicine. The door slides shut as he follows a scent under the deck. Finding the rabbit, Shiro lies flat on his stomach, right there in the relatively unsnowy dirt. He tries to let the little guy know that he means it no harm. It tilts its head and wiggles its nose in response. Almost quizzically, it regards Shiro for long enough, without any apparent fear or desire to make a break for it, that he wonders if his intended might have magically possessed the poor animal and made it come to spy on Shiro, like those weird insects that followed him around Nalquod.

Grumbling, he points out to himself that he doesn’t know if Summer Court magic is capable of that. Not that it matters. His noise makes the bunny startle, and it darts out into the snow. When he trudges out from under the deck, Shiro finds tracks that lead to a little hole that’s gotten dug beside the gate. There’s probably another trail leading away on the other side. 

Around midday, Keith brings him lunch. When Shiro still doesn’t feel like talking, he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. A few minutes later, he comes back with Regris, Ulaz, and a set of shovels. As they scrape along the surface of the deck, clearing off the snow, Shiro tries to stay out of their way. He doesn’t want to make a nuisance of himself while they try to do something genuinely useful. Wandering where his impulses move him, though, he stops to peer under the deck. He can’t see anything new, but he waits long enough for someone to dump snow on top of him. It hits Shiro on the back of the neck. He tries to shake it out, but a second load falls on him before he’s properly cleaned himself up.

With a pointed whine, he glares up at Keith, who only rewards him with a shrug.

“Just making sure you still know that I’m here for you,” he deadpans. “And giving you the chance to _not_ have me call somebody. You should call him on your own, but I’m not opposed to doing that _for_ you, if you want to roll around in the dirt all day.”

Huffing, Shiro drops to his back and rolls around. Keith mutters, _“Smartass”_ at him, but returns to his work without any fussing.

Left by himself, Shiro loses track of time again. Although the sky isn’t darkening properly, the sun’s getting low in the sky when he hears someone whistle from somewhere back around the house. Busy lapping up the snow for a drink of water, Shiro ignores the sound. Whoever it is can come find him themself, and he means to stick to that conviction. Except a cool breeze rustles through the bare branches, the pine needles, and Shiro’s fur, carrying with it a familiar scent that makes him perk up despite himself. He sniffs and the new visitor whistles again. Tail wagging, Shiro bounds toward the homestead.

Near the foot of the deck’s stairs stands a young man wrapped up in a sweatshirt from old Miskatonic University, who looks almost exactly like Shiro’s own human-passing shape. The most notable differences are the lack of scars, the way his hair is still all-black, and the fact that Ryou still has both of his organic arms. People more closely acquainted with the twins might notice that Ryou is softer around the edges than his brother, a consequence of graduate school and working in a library rather than getting bitten by a werewolf. The squareish-framed, black plastic glasses would tip most people off as well, but Shiro had a set of his own before he got dragged into a life of lycanthropy. Letting out a low, rumbling sigh, Shiro hangs back for a moment and watches Ryou. There’s a good-sized pile of snow behind him, pretty stable-looking, so it might not be _too_ terribly dangerous to do what Shiro wants.

But Ryou might not appreciate that kind of greeting, or he might not feel up to it, tonight. The fact that he’s here doesn’t mean that he wants to deal with his brother clinging at him like the godawful disaster of a werewolf that he is.

Or, on the other hand, Ryou might hold his arms open and say, “Well? Come on, then. Where’s my brotherly, ‘Hello’?”

Well, with that kind of invitation, Shiro dashes at Ryou and tackles him into the snowbank. While Ryou has the wind knocked out of him, Shiro goes at his face, licking at his cheeks and his jaw and his nose, at his chin and his ears and the corners of his mouth. The only care that Shiro takes is trying his best to avoid Ryou’s glasses, to spare Ryou cleaning up lupine saliva with his shirt. Laughing those full-bodied laughs of his, Ryou squirms, ruffles his hands all over Shiro’s back and sides. Even if he isn’t _pack_ in the same sense as the other Marmoran werewolves, Ryou might as well be that for Shiro. He might as well be for how often he gets to come around the homestead too, and for how Ulaz has gotten him Kolivan’s permission to dig around the pack’s archives and library at his leisure. If Ryou ever gets his way, then somebody, someday, will bite him and bring him into the pack, properly.

For now, though, Ryou being Ryou is more than enough. Affection from him has the same warm feeling of _belonging_ and _home_ as Shiro finds with Keith, and the same feeling of safety that he gets from the _actual_ members of his pack. After a few minutes of face-licking and fur-ruffling, Shiro manages to settle down. When Ryou nudges him, he shifts so his brother can sit up and gently drops his head into Ryou’s lap. With one of Ryou’s hands — big, yes, but almost as soft as Prince Lance’s hands — stroking over his skull and ears, Shiro nestles against his brother’s thigh and breathes much easier.

“Someone came to see me about you the other day,” Ryou says, as offhandedly as he would say that the news radio weather report thinks more snow is coming. Shiro huffs by way of telling him to go on, but Ryou doesn’t do so until Shiro looks up at him. “Iverson. That’s who came to see me. Can you even believe that?”

Shiro sighs, and blinks at Ryou, and hopes that this communicates how utterly implausible the idea sounds.

Ryou shrugs and pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Yeah, I know, I couldn’t believe it for a while, either. But it happened. He swung by the library when I was on my Wednesday afternoon shift. While I was reshelving some books, he comes up to me, all like, ‘How’s your brother. Have you heard from him. How is his _research_ going with Kolivan. Can we talk about him, do you have a second’—”

Groaning, Shiro thwaps a paw at Ryou’s thigh. In turn, Ryou flicks one of his ears.

“I didn’t break The Silence, Kashi,” he says. “I’m not an _idiot_. As far as anyone on campus knows, Kolivan and Thace are still on leave for an actual, legitimate scholarly project, while you and Keith are helping them. Nothing about werewolves or magic or negotiating anything.”

That sounds so nice in theory, but Shiro whines as he settles back into Ryou’s lap. There’s so much at risk from anyone, even non-magical kin and hunters, talking about the magical world out among normal humans. So many things could be exposed. So many lives could be put in danger. Shiro didn’t volunteer himself to marry someone who hates him — or at the very least, resents the fact that he’s marrying Takashi Shirogane and not Sven Gineikiba — just so his brother could run right out and expose everything that Shiro’s trying to protect.

Ryou slouches, apparently so he can make better eye-contact while telling Shiro, “I promise you: nothing got revealed. I didn’t even tell him what you and the pack have actually been up to. Besides that? Iverson had these little devices to trick and block out eavesdroppers. They actually work, too. Lauren was hovering outside the study room where we talked and she asked what class I’m TAing for him, how I even have the time for that. Because that’s what she thought she heard us talking about. I guess Iverson’s cabal recruited a runaway mage who escaped from the Fae?”

Shiro’s ears prick up, making Ryou arch an eyebrow. But he continues without commenting on it: “Anyway, I guess I should be saying that Iverson’s _former_ cabal did the recruiting—” Ryou pauses right on time for Shiro to tilt his head and give him a perplexed whine. “I wish I even _knew_ what to tell you about that, brother. Or about what I make of it. I wish I had the first clue—”

“Do you _ever_ have the first clue? About anything?” calls Keith from somewhere above them. Lifting his head, Shiro spots Keith leaning on the railing of the deck. He huffs when Ryou silently flips him off, and blows a loose clump of hair off of his forehead. “I called you because Shiro’s been moping around like this since last night, and he won’t talk to me or Ulaz about it. Now quit gossiping like a teenager, work your inexplicable twin magic, and make him come inside.”

“There is no such thing as _twin magic_ ,” Ryou deadpans. “I’m easing him into it with some—”

“Gossiping about Iverson isn’t _helpful_ , you’re encouraging him to sympathize with someone _horrible_. Shiro trusted Iverson and that asshole turned on him for being a werewolf. Helped _torture_ him. How can you even sit there—”

Shiro barks, effectively cutting Keith off. It takes him a moment of pacing to shake himself enough, but he shifts back. Sitting naked in the snow is more uncomfortable than anything, not truly painful for Shiro, thanks to his lycanthropy, but it’s wet and slippery and dirty. While Shiro’s brushing any lingering fur out of his hair, Keith drops a heavy blanket over the railing. It falls onto Shiro’s head and he flails, trying to yank it down over his lap and his legs so that it actually covers anything. He should probably wrap it around his shoulders, too, but for now, it’s enough for Shiro not to be naked.

“Still cracks me up, you and your modesty,” Ryou says. “‘Identical’ means you’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before—”

“Pretty sure it doesn’t,” Keith counters. “Also, after the last full? He has some _scars_ you’ve never seen before—”

“ _As I was going to say about Iverson_ ,” Shiro cuts in, briefly glaring up at Keith for running his mouth off about that. He drags a hand back through his hair again, then sighs and drops into a slouch. “He didn’t take part in any of the _actual_ torture. Maybe he played the, ‘good cop’ to the rest of them, but he seemed to genuinely care whether or not I was okay. Trying to bait me with a nonsense cure? That hit below the belt, and it was probably the worst thing he did. But he only said it because he wanted to believe in that idea, because he didn’t want me to be a werewolf. I’m not going to judge him for that, either, when I’ve wanted the exact same thing since I first got _turned_ —”

“There’s a difference,” says Keith, “between _you_ not wanting to live with something that Sendak forced on you? And _Iverson_ trying to peddle some bullshit cure for lycanthropy because he thinks you’re inherently worth less as a werewolf than you were as a human—”

“And if I can have a chance to speak already?” Ryou snorts, mussing a hand over his own hair. “I think Iverson might be coming around about that.” While Keith makes a series of derisive, disbelieving noises, Ryou rolls his eyes. Glancing up at him, Ryou deadpans, “Are you done. Can I please finish speaking my piece, now.”

Keith waves a hand dismissively. “Whatever gets you to the real point faster, Dostoevsky.”

“Well, as I _wanted_ to say, before Keith interrupted?” Sighing, Ryou scoots toward Shiro. How he can wear his jeans in the snow without minding it, Shiro has no idea, but he isn’t going to argue with Ryou being closer to him. Nudging his knee at Shiro’s bicep, Ryou tells him, “I may not know what I make of it exactly, yet? But the way Iverson talked about his cabal sorta sounded like they’re on the outs? At the very least, he seems to be disagreeing with them about several points these days. I mean, he full-on said that he’s trying to make his people see that not all werewolves are as bad as Zarkon and Sendak. He _was_ concerned about you, and he asked if you still wander off in wolf-form—”

“On your own. Without telling anybody. Even though Kolivan and Ulaz have tried to make you _stop_ —”

“And I don’t think that he’s _left_ his cabal, exactly? But he asked if I’d pass along messages from him about when they’re planning to be active in certain areas, in the interests of you avoiding those places. Of course I said, ‘Yes,’ but he didn’t have anything to offer this time, and I’m just feeling like…” Ryou shrugs. “Well, it’s like I said? I have no idea what I think about it yet or not. I _want_ it to be genuine, but it might not be? But I really, really hope it is? And if it is, maybe you could talk to him again?”

Despite having his full capacity for speech available to him, all Shiro can muster, for a moment, is a furrowed brow and a bemused, throaty little noise. Even when he remembers where his vocabulary’s gone, it’s only to ask if they can go inside. As far as blankets go, Keith picked out a good one. Nice and heavy, cozy like a good hug, big enough to cover up Kolivan and Antok much less Shiro. If the cold could still affect him beyond moderate annoyance, then this blanket would keep him warm and keep him as close as he ever gets to happy.

But now that he’s back in his humanoid shape, he _does_ want to get his clothes back. Nudity only feels okay for so long. After a while, nothing takes the edge off of the _exposed_ and _wounded_ , empty feeling that comes from sitting around naked like this, and Shiro’s pushing right up against his limit for tolerating that. The sooner he gets his clothing, the better.

Moreover, shifting between shapes takes up a lot of energy, no matter how used to it you get. It was easier to ignore at Nalquod, with the distraction of magic and the way it their food stuck to your ribs for longer. Now, there’s nothing to take Shiro’s mind off of how he rather needs to eat something. Hunger gnaws inside his stomach as he shuffles the blanket onto his shoulders and trudges up the deck’s stairs, as he and Ryou head to his room so he can get dressed and Keith heads off in the opposite direction, toward the kitchen.

When Shiro and Ryou rejoin him, Keith’s nearly done making up a tall stack of pancakes, rashers of bacon, and scrambled eggs. The same “breakfast for dinner” that Keith’s Dad used to make for him, and for Shiro whenever Keith had him over late enough. After Keith lost his Dad but before he ran off to search for his Mom, when he was staying with the Shiroganes, Keith taught Shiro how to make it for himself and put up with Shiro’s relative ineptitude in a kitchen. When they were finally together again at Miskatonic, Keith kept a room at Shiro and Ryou’s old place so he wouldn’t have to commute to campus in the morning with Kolivan and Thace. Breakfast for dinner was a staple of their life there.

Now, as Shiro pulls up onto one of the tall stools around the freestanding counter in the center of the room, Keith’s breakfast for dinner makes the entire kitchen feel even more like home. The heady, salty mix of scents goes well with the easy warmth that Shiro slides into while sitting around his two favorite people. Ryou gets the orange juice out of the fridge for them, then the maple syrup. While he’s waiting for everything to be ready, Shiro manages to breathe so easily, he almost feels like he could ignore the way his brother purses his lips and glances toward Keith. Between the two of them, Shiro gets feeling like the food is only a way to butter him up and make him more amenable whatever intervention-flavored Serious Discussion they have in mind. As if anything they can say will change how much Shiro’s fiancé _detests_ him.

At least Ryou waits until Keith hands over Shiro’s plate before nudging himself up closer to the island with a sigh and eager curiosity glimmering on every piece of his face. “So. You’re gonna be a Prince Consort of the Summer Court, huh?”

Shiro shrugs. He pointedly shoves a forkful of egg into his mouth instead of saying anything.

“I don’t know if that’s going to be his _official_ title or anything,” Keith points out, handing Ryou a plate as well. Dishing up his own, he explains, “The Fae can be a bit weird about their titles. The Spring Court’s pretty straightforward, but then the Winter Court really isn’t? Then, Prince Lance is a bastard. He still gets titles under Fae law, but I don’t know if they’re any different or—”

“Does it really _matter_ what we call it?” says Shiro. Pushing the eggs around his plate, he pauses. He lets Keith settle on a stool without missing anything. “It’s a political marriage to solidify alliances so that fewer innocent folks get killed, and the Prince hates me.”

That makes Keith grumble but he says nothing. Snorting skeptically, Ryou tries to insist that Shiro has no way of knowing this for certain. Once he’s heard about Shiro’s first meeting with his new intended, he sighs and slouches over onto the counter. He props himself up on his elbows and mulls things over, taking deep breaths while he ponders. Fortunately, the quiet lasts long enough for Shiro to get a good deal of his dinner down. Any conversation about this will probably go easier when he’s eaten.

Finally, Ryou clears his throat. “Granted, I wasn’t there or anything,” he says. “But it seems to me like you’re making a snap judgment about how this marriage is going to work or not? Based on _one_ conversation, only? And it wasn’t a conversation while the Prince was really at his best, I mean? If I’d just gotten promised off in marriage to somebody without any say in it, I don’t think I’d feel too great about it.”

“I was an obnoxious little shit in our first meeting _without_ being engaged to you,” Keith points out. “Look how that turned out.”

“You also weren’t plotting to escape out your bedroom window so you could run from marrying me.” Shiro reaches for the syrup and drizzles it over his pancakes. He cuts off a bite with the side of his fork, but can’t make himself bring it to his lips. “Look, I’m not going to make a break for it. I said that I’d marry Prince Lance and I intend to—”

“I didn’t think that you were planning to run.” Ryou arches an eyebrow at Keith. “Did _you_ think that?”

“No? Why would I?” Regardless of having that much faith in Shiro, Keith sighs and slouches toward him. “I was more thinking that you needed a morale boost because you’re being fatalistic about this match. Which I’m _right_ about, because you _are_.”

Shiro pushes his white forelock back off his face and chomps down on the pancakes. Once he’s swallowed, he supposes that he has no idea what Keith and Ryou want to hear from him. But neither of them says anything to that, so Shiro sucks it up and clarifies, “I’m being _realistic_ about this marriage, based on mine and the Prince’s first meeting. As far as I can tell? He hates me, which I don’t _like_ but I can live with it—”

“You don’t _have_ to live with it,” Keith cuts in. “It doesn’t _need_ to be so—”

“I can’t get out of the engagement without putting the alliances in jeopardy, so yes, Keith. I _need_ to live with this.” Trying to look Keith in the eye properly ends with Shiro getting glowered at like Keith had something else in mind entirely.

But with a huff and as if he hasn’t noticed anything particularly _off_ about his best friend’s expression, Shiro says, “If it keeps the alliances alive, then Prince Lance doesn’t ever need to love me. If our being married makes life less dangerous for the rest of the magical communities, then he can hate me as much as he likes. Whatever he wants to do, I’ll stand by what I promised him last night. I’ll protect him, and honor his Court’s customs, and do everything that I can to make our marriage as painless and as comfortable as possible for him.”

If Shiro can pull that off, then maybe Prince Lance will find something approximating happiness in their marriage. That’s the best that Shiro can reasonably hope to get. Wishing for anything else would probably press his luck and make things even worse than they already are.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where it’s due? The supernatural beings in this fic, their world, and their dealing with humans and hunters were inspired by a mish-mosh of different sources, including but not limited to:
> 
>   * what I know of some of the real-world mythologies and folklores that created some of them (primarily the traditions of the British Isles, Celtic mythology, Norse mythology, and the different European and Eastern European stories about werewolves and similar shape-shifting magical beings, including places where vampires and werewolves used to be treated as related or similar);  
> 
>   * some of the literary/filmic/televised/otherwise pop culture depictions of werewolves (in particular, JK Rowling deserves a shout-out for the Wolfsbane Potion giving me the idea of Ulaz using potions and tinctures to help Shiro through the full moon, while MTV’s _Teen Wolf_ inspired a lot about the human hunters and how they work, their use of wolfsbane as an anti-werewolf poison when irl wolfsbane is poisonous to pretty much everyone, their use of poisoned bullets against werewolves, and the idea that werewolves can’t be affected by the same intoxicants that affect humans without extenuating circumstances);  
> 
>   * some bits and pieces from the _World of Darkness_ tabletop RPGs, in particular _Werewolf: The Apocalypse_ , _Vampire: The Masquerade_ (for the idea of vampire clans and their leaders), and _Changeling: The Lost_ (and a little bit of _Changeling: The Dreaming_ );  
> 
>   * the _Warhammer Fantasy_ tabletop RPG (at least in that the sewer-dwelling vampires Hunk mentions are essentially a loose mashup of VTM’s Nosferatu clan and WFRPG’s Strigoi bloodline);  
> 
>   * the mechanics of mages’ True Names were inspired by a few different sources but most of it came from Ursula K. LeGuin’s idea of the True Name from the _Wizard of Earthsea_ series;  
> 
>   * while not a direct reference or borrowing of ideas as such, because a werewolf losing their clothes does not trap them in their lupine shape in this fic, Shiro disrobing and caring about his clothes remaining safe was inspired by the eponymous werewolf hero from Marie de France’s _Bisclavret_ , who needed to transform into his wolf shape once a month and _would_ find himself stuck in that form if anyone stole his clothing while he was off in the woods;  
> 
>   * the title is what it is because I couldn’t stop thinking of Eugene O’Neill’s play _Moon For The Misbegotten_ while trying to come up with a name for this fic, but that’s not really a direct inspiration either because about the only thing the fic and the play have in common are that they’re written in English;  
> 
>   * and there are probably several other inspirations that I’m forgetting right now because I suck and there is literally nothing new or original being done with this urban fantasy kitchen sink.
> 

> 
> Also, although HP Lovecraft and the writers of the extended Cthulhu mythos didn’t actually inspire that much of anything in this fic, Miskatonic University _is_ the creation of HP Lovecraft, and I sincerely hope that, if there is an afterlife, then his spirit feels horribly offended that I would ever even mention it in proximity to a fanfic like this, much less have it be the place where Shiro, Ryou, and Keith went to college, where Iverson teaches, and where Ryou is a graduate student with a job in the library.


End file.
